A colleague was recently told to “give it to someone who cares” when handing out information on electrification. Over the course of the last five years, my family has taken steps to electrify our lives and we cut our total yearly energy cost by more than half. By total energy costs I mean what we pay for heating/cooling our home, heating our hot water, cooking and our cost of transportation (“gas” for our car).
When we built our home 13 years ago, we installed a geothermal heat pump for heating/cooling and a heat pump water heater. We used methane (natural) gas for cooking and as a heat source for the garage. Over the last five years we installed rooftop solar panels, replaced the garage heating with an air source heat pump, transitioned to driving an electric vehicle 95% of the time and switched to an induction stove for cooking. The result is a total energy bill less than half of what it was — on average saving us more than $2,500 a year.
In general, an electric vehicle is 90% efficient at converting electricity to force that moves the car. The thermodynamics of combustion results in converting only 15% to 20% of the gasoline energy to force that moves a car. At $3 a gallon, $2.40 of your hard-earned money is literally set on fire and lost as wasted heat.
A heat pump doesn’t use energy to generate heat, but uses it to move heat from one source to another, either heating or cooling a home. For every unit of electricity a heat pump uses, it can move three to four times that amount of heat energy, making it 300% to 400% efficient. So, for every $1 spent on electricity, you get $3 to $4 worth of heat/cooling. In contrast, the most efficient methane gas furnace achieves an efficiency of 99% — meaning for every $1 you pay for gas you get 99 cents worth of heat. And a methane gas furnace can’t cool your home and requires an investment in a standalone air conditioning system and the additional cost to run it.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the price of electricity is projected to increase 4% this year and 6% next, so you might ask why would I electrify? The price of electricity can go up, but my cost for sunlight will remain zero. In comparison, the cost of methane gas for the electric power industry surged by more than 40% during the first half of 2025 according to the administration, and is projected to rise another 17% next year.
According to the New York Times, China exported $40 billion worth of solar products while the U.S. shipped $69 million last year. Solar technology was invented in the U.S. by Bell Labs researchers in 1954. Over the ensuing decades, U.S. researchers developed numerous emerging technologies that have the potential to provide the U.S. with energy security and a future of a clean-tech-powered economy. However, the current administration seems intent on protecting the legacy aging fossil-fuel industry and slashing federal funding for research and support of these future clean-tech industries. This will only give our nation’s economic rivals a clear path to dominate and control the development and economic benefit of these future clean-tech energy industries.
Whether you care about saving money, energy independence, economic security or national security, the physics of switching from burning things to generate electricity to generating it directly through modern and sustainable clean-tech energy sources makes a compelling case to transition to an electrified life.
Bret Luedke lives in Whitefish.