Steve and Lisa - On the path to decarbonize

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We are fortunate to get 100% carbon free electricity from our local Community Choice Aggregation program (CCA): Silicon Valley Clean Energy. This is a great program in California that allows local governments to procure clean energy for residents in the area. This means that everyone in this community has access to clean energy at affordable rates. But we wanted to do more to eliminate our carbon emissions as much as possible.

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In 2019 we replaced our 13 year old tankless natural gas water heater (not as environmentally friendly as we thought) with a Rheem heat pump water heater. I installed it myself and it’s working great! Ours is connected to the grid so we get paid by OhmConnect when they turn it off during peak loads. This helps avoid blackouts and we don’t even notice because it gets turned off only occasionally and for just a very short time.

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That same year we replaced our forced air gas furnace and AC with a Mitsubishi heat pump. We had to get used to keeping it running overnight in the winter and the summer so the system didn’t have to quickly heat or cool the house in the morning. It’s working great - it has a COP of 4.2 (a measure of efficiency where 1 is 100%; the highest efficiency gas furnace will have a COP of less than 1). WOW - we are using far less energy than our old system.

We converted to an induction cooktop last summer. Lisa is a great cook and she loves it. We also got a condensing LG washer/dryer combo that just SIPS electricity and you don’t have to move the wash from the washer to the dryer. We connected our pool pump to solar PV panels on the roof.

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Our vehicle fleet is now entirely electric. We used to have an old school bus that we converted to an RV with our son. We ran it on veggie oil, but now we have a used Tesla which is great for road trips. We have an old 2012 Think City EV that we use around town. We have an electric motorcycle but we mostly try to bike as much as possible. We have pretty much stopped flying except for a couple of emergencies.

It’s a work in progress. We love that all our electric appliances and vehicles run on 100% clean energy, but our gas line is not yet capped, so we have more to do.