My house is now free from the direct burning of fossil fuels. Here’s how I did it.

Car

In March 2021 I replaced my old car with a Tesla Model 3. At that time the range of electric vehicles available in Australia was meagre and the Model 3 was an easy choice. It has been great. It’s fast, quiet, smooth, and reliable. I love one-pedal driving. I haven’t paid for petrol in four years. I don’t want to ever own an ICE car again.

I charge it from a normal power point in my garage. It takes more than 24 hours to fully charge the battery from empty, but that’s a rare use case for me. Topping up 20-50% overnight is much more common. You can get a special home charger that’s 3.5x faster but I haven’t bothered. My model has an LFP battery which tolerates being charged to 100% regularly, which I like a lot. Charging at home is fantastic, and if you don’t have some kind of off-street parking (garage, carport, or even just a small driveway) that allows this, an EV is a lot less enticing.

I also mostly do city driving. I have used Tesla superchargers on longer drives a few times. This has worked fine, but there aren’t that many of them around and it could be inconvenient if I did lots of long country drives.

Maintenance-wise it’s a dream. Do you know how complicated internal combustion engines are? How many moving parts they have? Electric motors are trivial in comparison. No sparkplugs, belts, chains, or pistons. No transmission! (And no transmission hump in the floor.) I’ve never seen my car’s motor. It’s not accessible, because it doesn’t need to be. There is no regular motor maintenance to be done by the owner. No changing the oil, no topping up the radiator. Tyres and windscreen wipers are the main things that need attention. Even brake pads and brake fluid last much longer than ICE cars because regenerative braking does 99% of the job when slowing down.

It doesn’t have full self-driving because (a) I wouldn’t trust that, and (b) it’s not legal in Australia.

Unfortunately, over the past four years Elon Musk has gone from “distasteful” to “serious candidate for worst person in the world”. My car now has a sticker that says “I bought this before we learned Elon was crazy”. The very first day the sticker was applied I got a yell of approval about it from another Tesla driver. Even though this car has been great for me I wouldn’t buy another Tesla now, because of the brand association and the general direction of the company. I also don’t want to sell it, because it’s working well for me, and I hate buying and selling cars, and it’s not obvious what non-Tesla EV is the best alternative. Hrmph.

Hot water

Two years ago I replaced my gas hot water tank with a Reclaim Energy one that uses an electric heat pump. It was pretty straightforward and the new tank has worked flawlessly.

I was always slightly terrified by just how intense the old gas tank’s flames were, that “whoosh” sound when it kicked in, and I’ve never liked the idea of a pilot light that was always burning. The new tank doesn’t feel like it could one day accidentally blow my house up. That’s a nice feeling.

Stove top

Shortly after I replaced the hot water tank I replaced my gas stove top with an Asko electric induction stove top. This required running a new electrical circuit to the kitchen. Fortunately the fusebox had enough capacity so it wasn’t a big deal.

Induction cooking takes a little getting used to and I had to replace some aluminium pots and pans with steel ones, but now I really like it. It can produce prodigious amounts of heat, even more than the old gas wok burner.

It is also an absolute dream to clean. I wipe it down in a few seconds every time after cooking. Compare that with the old gas stove top which I would clean half-heartedly about once a week and properly about once a quarter. I don’t miss those filthy metal rings and grates.

I also don’t miss the air pollutants from burning gas inside a house. Did you know that 12% of childhood asthma in Australia can be attributed to the use of gas stoves for cooking? The history of the study of air pollution on human health is basically a never-ending cycle of scientists concluding “it’s even worse than we thought”.

Heating

Last month I replaced the house’s heating and cooling system. I had a ducted system with a gas heater and an add-on air conditioner. It was fifteen years old and the air conditioner broke down irreparably. My house has some interesting space constraints and I received some opinions that I should switch to per-room split systems but I ended up choosing a ducted Daikin heat pump (a.k.a. reverse-cycle air conditioner) that heats and cools. Technology has come along nicely here: the new unit is more powerful but also quieter than the old system; it can run at multiple speeds instead of just being fully on or off; and it’s smaller, so I have a little more space along the side of the house.

Bits and pieces

I have made a request with the gas company to disconnect my house from the gas network and remove the gas meter. It should be done within a couple of weeks. My contribution to the gas death spiral.

I do still have one fossil fuel device: a barbecue powered by a gas bottle. But that barbecue gets used about twice a year and probably accounts for about 0.01% of the fossil fuels that were used by the old car, stove top, hot water tank, and heater, so I’m happy to treat it as a rounding error and declare victory.

You might be wondering about the usual question: how is the electricity used by these new machines generated? Before I answer that, note that these kinds of electric machines are generally less polluting even when run on electricity generated entirely from fossil fuels, because they are so much more energy-efficient. E.g. an EV typically converts more than 90% of energy in the battery into kinetic energy; the corresponding figure for an ICE car is more like 25-30%. Heat pumps and induction stove tops are also extremely efficient.

Fortunately, my situation is much better than that baseline. First, I have a small (2 KW) solar panel system that covers some of my electricy usage. Beyond that, most of my electricity does come from the grid, but more than 40% of Australia’s electricity supply is now renewable. That proportion has tripled in less than ten years, and the federal government has a target of 82% renewables by 2030 which appears to be more or less on target. So these new machines will become less polluting as time goes on.

Replacing any large machine is always a pain, but it’s worth noting that, even if you ignore the environmental side of things, the new electric machines are all better than the old fossil fuel machines they replace: quieter, safer, smoother, and cheaper to run. No hair shirts required.

Saul Griffith’s The Big Switch: Australia’s Electric Future is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to learn more about electrification.