In our effort to make Prairie Hill Cohousing as sustainable as possible, we have chosen to have an all-electric community. A recent article in the Mother Jones magazine (link below) gives a hopeful picture of how we can positively affect climate change by shifting to electricity, especially as we move from non-renewable to renewable sources.
Below are some quotes from the article, which we urge you to read! And here is the link:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/04/electric-cars-coal-power-plants-climate-change
"It turns out that one of the most immediate societal changes for average Americans in a climate-savvy future would likely be the electrification of just about everything. In other words, the hope of the planet could lie in a force—electricity—we've known about for hundreds of years."
"We get energy from fossil fuels in two basic ways: either by burning it in a power plant to create electricity that gets used elsewhere, or by burning it directly where it's needed—i.e., your car's internal combustion engine or a gas-fueled stove. Williams' basic idea—which has also been advanced by other leading energy economists, particularly Stanford's Mark Jacobson—is to ax that second category as much as possible, while simultaneously "decarbonizing" the electric grid by replacing fossil fuels with wind, solar, and other renewables."
"How do we get on track? Williams argues that policymakers need to start spending less energy worrying about fuel efficiency for oil-powered cars and focus instead on speeding up the transition to electric vehicles. That's something the Obama administration has only scratched the surface of, so it could be an area of focus for the next president. Power grid operators, too, need to start planning for a future in which there could be major demand for electricity in sectors (i.e., electric cars, home heating, etc.) that are small now."
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