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Electrifying household energy use is a key policy lever for addressing the climate crisis. However, there are many challenges to designing policies to promote beneficial electrification that reduces greenhouse gas emissions while also advancing health, equity, and affordability goals. This research focuses on the case of the United States, where one billion household machines – from cars to furnaces to stoves – currently run on fossil fuels. Additionally, one in three U.S. households report difficulty paying their energy bills, and low-income households may be less likely to adopt new technologies. New policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act provide opportunities to address these inequities but may exacerbate them without careful implementation.
Here we focus on the electrification challenge in U.S. cities. We begin with a detailed case study of Massachusetts, a leader in state and local climate action that faces multiple electrification challenges, including aging fossil fuel infrastructure and high demand for home heating. We use this case explore the effects of local policy actions to reduce methane emissions from natural gas systems while simultaneously advancing net zero and electrification goals. Our analysis combines engineering and infrastructure models, household property data, document and legal analysis, and qualitative interviews to characterize inequities in electrification and the effects of fossil fuel stranded assets on low-income communities.
We then extend this analysis beyond Massachusetts to examine electrification challenges across the United States. We find evidence of inequities in access to a key electrification technology, air source heat pumps, across low-income and minority communities – and show that uncoordinated policies could result in substantial increases in energy bills for households that cannot electrify. We then discuss innovative community electrification solutions that can enable cities to simultaneously promote equity and climate goals.