By Mark Jaffe, EUCI energy writer
Frosty New England may not seem the best region for full-scale home-heating electrification, but while such a move might double demand, it could reduce the combined cost of natural gas and electricity by 29%, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study.
With its cold winters, significant rural population, and a reliance on natural gas for both home heating and electric generation, New England does not appear to be the likeliest of regions for a massive shift to electric heating.
“Critics will say that electrification is never going to happen,” said Morgan Santoni-Colvin, an associate at Energy and Environmental Economics who worked on the MIT study. “It’s just too expensive.”
The problem is that so far, analyses have just looked at the cost on the electric side without looking at the savings on the natural gas side.
“We know that electrification will require large investments in the electricity infrastructure,” Santoni-Colvin said. “But what hasn’t been well-quantified in the literature is the savings that we generate on the natural gas side by doing that – so the system-level savings.”
For the grid, the shift to electric home-heating would be significant as most homes are now heated with natural gas. It would lead to an estimated increase in peak electric demand of between 56% and 156%.
In the MIT analysis’ high electrification scenario (80% of the region’s homes going to electric heat pumps by 2050), the peak residential demand alone could be comparable to the current New England system-wide peak of up to 26 gigawatts (GW).
Under this scenario, the residential sector’s peak would also shift from the summer – for summer cooling – to the winter for heating. The summer peak currently exceeds the winter by an average 1.2 GW. Under the high electrification scenario, the winter would top summer by 15 GW.
The regional numbers mask variation in some local areas. For example, less-populated regions, such as Vermont, Maine, and rural New Hampshire, would experience the greatest relative increases in peak load.
The winter load, however, can be reduced through a combination of energy efficiency initiatives, demand-side management, and load flexibility or peak reduction programs.
“Building envelope improvement (adding insulation and sealing air leaks), which improves thermal efficiency, can reduce the magnitude and duration of peak electric demand, as well as annual electric demand,” the study said.
Employing demand-side measures, such as building envelope improvements under high electrification, can reduce the combined residential sector power-gas demand by 28% to 30% and yield 21% to 29% lower bulk power-gas system cost outcomes, the study calculated.
Demand flexibility programs – which can have some customers shift or defer electric use – can reduce the total system cost as much as another 6.3%.
Completely electrifying about 80% of homes in the region coupled with home-heating improvements, such as insulation, results, the study said, in the lowest combined residential power and gas demand – up to 30% lower than values in 2020, while reducing inter-annual variation in peak electricity demand.
Such a shift would also have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, a sector which has lagged in reductions. While carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. electric power sector dropped by 34% between 2005 and 2021, emissions in the building sector declined by only 18%.
Under the high adoption scenario, the MIT researchers estimate carbon dioxide emissions from New England homes would be cut 80% over 1990 levels.
“A theme of our findings is that a flexible, low-carbon electricity resource and/or low-carbon energy carrier will likely be needed to supply the energy demands of electrification cost-effectively while meeting decarbonization objectives in cold climates,” the study said.
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