No Place Like Home: Fighting Climate Change (and Saving Money) by Electrifying America’s Households
October 2020 | By Saul Griffith and Sam Calisch
Many Americans feel powerless to confront the enormity of climate change, especially when it seems that switching to clean energy at home — by buying electric cars or installing solar panels, for instance — is prohibitively expensive.
But our new report shows that the average American household can both fight climate change and save money at the same time. We can do it using existing technology, without sacrificing any comforts of home. In other words, we’ll have the same number of cars, ovens, dryers, refrigerators, air conditioners and heaters, but at dramatically lower cost and without the indoor and environmental pollution that accompany burning fossil fuels. If done right, we would create millions of new, good-paying jobs in every zip code, save each household on average between $1,050 to $2,585 per year on its energy bills, and dramatically reduce economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions — all the while enjoying zippier cars and smarter appliances.
In the paper, we model two scenarios for decarbonizing the American household. We are showing that if we want a moon shot — zero-carbon energy in every home — here's how to build the rocket.
Additional Materials
Read the technical version of the report, or request the model underpinning our research
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