Ecofrugal episodes, July 2025

Time for another exciting installment of ecofrugal episodes, in which I fill you in on all the little things that have been going well and not so well in our ecofrugal life. This past week or two has had a mix of both, so I'm doing the post in "hits and misses" style.

Hit: Our first trip to Savers

Last weekend, Brian and I went to visit my sister and her family in Boston. One of the things we did there was visit Savers, a for-profit thrift store chain we don't have in our area. (There's a store in the same family, called Thrift Superstore, in Union, but that's a good 40 minutes away.) The store has a good selection and decent prices, but no dressing rooms, so we had to either try things on as best we could in the aisles or take our best guess about the size. Brian got one pair of jeans and a new pair of Ren Faire shoes, since his current set (also thrifted) has proven insufficiently supportive for a long day of walking. I got one fairly cute top and a pair of warm tights for winter. (It's not clear how big a hit that purchase is, since I still don't know if they fit. I couldn't try them on in the store, and after we got them home it was too hot. But for only a couple of bucks, they seemed worth the risk.) 

Since my sister's family also brought along four bags' worth of used clothes to donate, they got four coupons good for 40% off on up to $100 worth of purchases and gave one to us. With that discount, our total cost was $26.87 for the four items. That's not breathtakingly cheap, but it's clearly cheaper than buying new, which isn't always the case at thrift shops nowadays.

Miss: A sustainable-living guide that doesn't

On our way back from Savers, we stopped by a farmers' market. One of the booths there was a used-book stall run by the local public library. I can't pass by a table full of books (especially cheap ones) without at least taking a look, and I always like to support libraries when I can, so I spent $2 on a paperback copy of The Self-Sufficiency Bible, by a Brit named Simon Dawson. The cover promised "100s of Ways to Live More Sustainably - Wherever You Are," so I was hoping there might be at least a handful I didn't already know about.

Unfortunately, like many books on this topic, this one proved to be a mix of things I already do and things that aren't relevant to me. The three chapters on "The Home Dairy," "Livestock," and "Meat Preparation and Basic Butchery" were of no use to us at all. The chapter "Curing and Preserving" wasn't completely irrelevant, because the instructions for preserving meat were interspersed with pointers on pickles, chutneys, sauces, jam, and dried mushrooms and herbs. But most of this was already familiar to us, as was everything in the chapter "The Home Baker." And parts of the chapter "The Kitchen Garden" were clearly aimed at a British audience and didn't apply to us, like the advice that tomatoes and peppers are "likely to disappoint you" if you try to grow them outdoors. 

There were also a few tips that didn't seem to fit the "self-sufficiency" brief. The chapter on "Natural Solutions: Health, Beauty, and the Home" contained numerous recipes for natural cleaners and beauty products made from ingredients that you clearly can't produce yourself and aren't cheap to buy, such as cocoa butter, sandalwood oil, and avocado. His homemade hair conditioner recipe ("beat an egg either with an avocado or a banana") would cost a minimum of $1.16 per application, while my Suave conditioner costs around 9 cents. 

Also, the few chapters that looked like they'd be most useful, like "Arty Crafty Bits," largely glossed over the details of the things I was keenest to learn about. The section on knitting lists all kinds of things you can make this way, but never actually talks about how to do it; the section on making your own clothes advises you to "buy a good, lightweight machine...and get sewing," as if setting the machine up and threading it and using it required no explanation. And on top of this, the book is peppered with errors, both mechanical ("it's" for "its," "forraging") and factual (saying that rhubarb leaves are unsafe to compost, describing wood as a green energy source).

Despite these drawbacks, I did manage to glean a few useful tidbits from this book. I learned (and confirmed from reliable sources) that it's best to water seedlings before transplanting them so you lose less soil; that you can make an alcoholic "turbo cider" from store-bought juice in a couple of weeks; that you can knit with strips of fabric rather than yarn; that the comfrey plant growing next to our recycling bin can be eaten (in moderation); and that you can preserve mushrooms at home by air-drying or freezing. But having filed away those facts, I don't see any need to keep the book on my shelf for future reference. I'll either donate it to our library book sale or drop it into one of our town's many Little Free Libraries so it can go to someone who may get more use out of it.

Hit: DIY shower indicator buttons

When Brian and I bought new shower control knobs nine years back, they came with little plastic "indicator buttons" to identify the hot, cold, and direction knobs. These weren't truly necessary, since most people know which is which, but they served to cover up the mounting screws. Unfortunately, within a year, these buttons started to fall apart. They wouldn't stay in place because the little teeth that held them in the knobs had come loose and begun to fall out. This looked like an easy fix; we just bought a new set of indicator buttons for about $5 and swapped them out. But within another year or so, these buttons also began to fall apart in exactly the same way. I looked for metal indicator buttons that I thought might be more sturdy than the plastic ones, but I couldn't find any to fit our faucets.

So, with two of our faucet knobs now sitting there naked and the third button hanging on by a thread, I started brainstorming ways to rig up a DIY version of these buttons. I considered metal bottle caps, but we don't tend to buy drinks in glass bottles, and I wasn't sure how I'd get them to fit into the faucets. I also thought about gluing some decorative beads in place, but that would make it impossible to get at the screws. Finally, I concluded that the best fix would be a couple of large metal washers tucked under the screws. This would leave the heads exposed, but it would hide the dingy, mineral-stained surface underneath. And if the washers themselves got dirty, I could easily remove, clean, and replace them.

I found two washers in our collection that were just the right size and painted them with nail polish: red, which I already had, for the hot-water tap and blue, which cost me $4 at the local discount store, for the cold. It was the work of a couple of minutes to remove the screws, thread the washers on, and screw them back in. With these in place, the damaged knobs look much more presentable. And whenever that last button gives up the ghost, I can give the middle knob the same treatment.

Miss: Shaky sunglasses repair 

On sunny days, I wear special sunglasses designed to fit over my regular glasses. They're much cheaper than a pair of prescription shades, and they're easier to put on and take off because I don't need to stash my other glasses. Their weak point, it turns out, is durability. This month, the frames cracked right across the top. Brian thought maybe he could mend them with epoxy, but the difficulty would be figuring out how to clamp them while the glue dried. I decided instead to shell out $2 for some fast-drying superglue from the discount store and try to fix them that way. I laid them out on a sheet of newspaper, put on gloves so I wouldn't glue my fingers together, dabbed on a little glue, and held the joined area in place for about a minute to let it set.

At first, this simple repair seemed to be holding. Then the crack opened back up, but only partway. I glued it again, but after a week, it popped open completely. I got out my tools and glued it one more time, but this time there was a slight mishap; I got a bit of glue on my glove, which then got stuck to the inside of the nose piece. I was able to pull most of the nitrile off, but there's still a little scrap of blue there that will have to be scraped off with a utility knife. And it remains unclear whether this second repair will hold any better than the first. If it doesn't, I'll have to move on to more complicated methods: either adding a splint along with the glue, as suggested at Eyeglass Repair USA, or plastic welding.

Miss: High quotes for heat pumps 

Last month, in the wake of a brutal heat wave and the passage of a bill that will kill home electrification credits at the end of this year, Brian and I took another stab at getting quotes for a home heat pump. Three weeks ago, after talking to two contractors and getting one quote back, I was feeling doubtful. Now, after five consultations and four quotes (the fifth one never got back to me, even after a follow-up call), I'm even more pessimistic. 

The bottom line seems to be that a system that can completely replace our gas boiler will cost well over 30 grand. That doesn't include the $10,000 decarbonization credit that the first contractor mentioned, but that's because none of the other contractors I spoke to believed that this credit actually exists. More than one of them said that PSE&G has been talking about such a program for years, but nothing has ever happened, and there's no evidence that this year will be any different.

Now, if we were willing to settle for a hybrid system—one that would supplement rather than replace the boiler, reducing our gas usage—we could probably do that for between 20 and 25 grand, including the upgrades to our electrical panel. But that's still a lot of money, and the new system would probably cost as much to run as our current one, if not more. So the costs would continue to pile up every year.

What I'm starting to wonder is, if we're only going to reduce, not eliminate, our use of fossil fuel for heating, do we even need to install a whole-house system? Maybe we could just replace our old through-the-wall air conditioning unit with a heat pump that could provide supplemental heating as well as cooling. It looks like we could buy one for around $1,000, and since it would be replacing an existing unit, the installation cost shouldn't be more than another grand; we might even be able to install it ourselves. We'd still need to use the gas boiler, but the heat pump could probably cut our gas use by half, and for less than one-tenth the price of a complete system. It would be like the heating equivalent of our little induction burner: not a full replacement for a gas appliance, but one that can take over most of its duties for a fraction of the price. Am I crazy, or is this the ecofrugal way?

Heat pumps revisited

In the middle of last week's heat wave, I decided maybe it was time to take another crack at getting quotes on a home heat pump. We were getting along okay, using every trick we knew to stay cool—keeping the blinds lowered and the oven off, using fans everywhere, drinking lots of water, and retreating to the basement at night—and running our window air conditioner for just an hour or so in the hottest part of the day. But the longer we stuck to this routine, the more I realized it wouldn't be sustainable on a long-term basis. We weren't getting nearly as much sleep as usual, partly because of the cats prowling over us all night and partly because of the early morning sun shining through the thin curtains. During the day, we were sitting with desk fans pointing directly in our faces and still sweating through the bare minimum of clothing we had on. 

We bore up under this pretty well because we knew that the heat wave was only going to last a few days. However, we also knew that this heat wave wouldn't be the last. On the contrary, as the planet continues to warm faster and faster, heat waves will only become more frequent and more punishing. Sooner or later—most likely sooner—we'll reach a point where it's no longer sustainable to live through a New Jersey summer without central air conditioning. And if we know we're going to have to put ourselves to all the trouble and expense of adding central AC, it seems silly not to spend a little more on a heat pump that works in both directions, so we'll no longer need to rely on fossil fuels to heat our home.

When we looked into this last year, we had a rather frustrating experience. Most of the contractors we spoke to refused to give us a quote at all, and the one quote we managed to get was for $23,400—significantly higher than the top of the range most sources provide for a heat pump installation in New Jersey. We decided at the time that we should just repair our gas boiler and put off a decision on a heat pump for a few years, figuring that by that time there might be better options available. But now, with Congress about to vote on a budget bill that will almost certainly kill the tax credit for installing a new heat pump, it was looking like a better idea to act right away.

This time around, I searched specifically for heat pump installers in Middlesex County, rather than just HVAC companies. At first, it looked like I was having better luck with this approach: I was able to schedule three appointments with three different companies within a week. But very quickly, things started to go downhill. First, one of the three contractors called me back and said he was completely booked up for this week and had "no idea" why his secretary had scheduled him to give me a quote. I then got an appointment with a different company for that same day, only to get a call back from them saying that actually, the kind of installation we'd need was too big a job for them to do during the summer rush. I said I didn't need the work done right away, just the quote, but they said no, they couldn't even give me that until August. So I called up yet another company (number five, if you're counting) and managed to get an appointment with them for Monday.

The first contractor came on Tuesday, and right away, he started giving me the same line I'd heard from the previous HVAC contractors: listen, heat pumps are great in warmer climates, but here in New Jersey, they're just not a reasonable way to heat your home in the winter. Yes, yes, you might see sources online that say they can do it, but he knew from personal experience that in the real world, they weren't up to the job. In vain did I point out that I'd personally talked to people who use cold-climate heat pumps in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and even Canada—all of which, last time I checked, were all in the real world—who were all heating their homes this way; he swore that he'd tested them for himself and they simply weren't practical. He even claimed it wasn't just a matter of electricity being more expensive than gas; at low temperatures, he insisted, a heat pump would actually use more energy, measured in Btus, than my gas boiler to produce the same degree of warming. He didn't explain how a heat pump that's over 200% efficient is supposed to use more energy than a gas boiler that's just under 90% efficient; he just knew for a fact that it would, and that was that.

For all his negative talk about heat pumps, however, he declared himself willing to give us a quote on one if that was what we really wanted. He recommended that we add ductwork to the upper level for heating and cooling, then leave the gas boiler in place to heat the basement when necessary. Bringing the ductwork down to the lower level, he claimed, wouldn't be worth the expense, since we seldom used the space and it would cool itself naturally in the summertime anyway. When I asked about ductless mini-splits, which most sources suggested would be cheaper for a house without existing ductwork, he said, "Not these days," citing price hikes (due largely to Trump's tariffs) that had significantly jacked up the price of each unit. And, after examining our electrical panel, he added that we'd definitely need to upgrade from 100 amps to 200 amps, which would be an additional expense.

The visit from the second contractor started off much better. When I told him what the first contractor had said about heat pumps falling short on winter heating, he said, "That guy must have been a real old-timer," because he'd been installing cold-climate heat pumps that did a great job in this climate for over ten years. He also mentioned something the first contractor hadn't: PSE&G's new "building decarbonization" program, which would give us a rebate of a whopping $10,000 on an electric heating system provided we got rid of the old gas boiler. (The gas water heater, dryer, and stove could stay, for the time being, as long as the heating system was disabled.) After examining our space, he said he'd recommend a cold-climate heat pump with six air handlers: one for each room in the house, not counting the bathrooms and the currently unheated laundry room. He also said that we could, in fact, do this with our existing 100-amp service, since we would no longer need the circuits devoted to the boiler pump and the upstairs air conditioner. However, he said he could give us a separate quote that would include a panel upgrade as well, in case we wanted to do it now in preparation for further electrification later.

After this visit, I was feeling much more optimistic. If his quote was in line with the $23,400 one we got last year, the $10,000 decarbonization credit would drop it to a much more manageable $13,400, and the $2,000 clean energy tax credit—still available up through the end of this year—would knock it down to $11,400. Even if his quote was closer to the $28,700 price the earlier contractor gave us for a ductless system, our all-in price would only be $18,700.

But my optimism evaporated when we saw the actual quote. The price for a six-zone ductless heat pump system, plus the deactivation of the old boiler, plus the upgrades to the electrical panel, would come to $38,720 before rebates, or $24,470 after. Even if we chose to skip the panel upgrade, it would be $19,630 after rebates. Moreover, hat price included only deactivating the old boiler, not actually removing it or the baseboard radiators, which would add another several thou. Oh, and it also didn't include any fees for permits. 

As if to soften the blow, a line at the bottom added that we wouldn't have to pay this all up front. Instead, we could use "utility interest-free financing," which would cost us a mere $291 per month, conveniently tacked on to our monthly utility bill, for 84 months. I know this would technically be a better deal, since we could keep the money in our account earning interest until each month's payment came due, and we'd also get to make the later payments with inflation-depreciated dollars. But to me, having that extra $300 monthly payment hanging over our head for the next seven years felt even worse than paying the 24 grand up front and being done with it.

This quote left me feeling seriously dejected and doubtful about whether a heat pump would ever make sense for us. I know we're in a better position to do it than many people, because we have the money; we can choose to take that $24K hit for the sake of the environment. But we'd only be doing it for the environment. A heat pump almost certainly wouldn't save us any money on our utility bills; most likely, it would end up costing us more every winter, perhaps significantly more. There's no chance at all that it would ever pay for itself. So we'd be paying $24,000 now (or $291 per month), plus an extra $100 or more on our heating bills every year, just to save the roughly 295 therms we'd otherwise burn to heat our home. According to the EPA, that would keep approximately 1.56 metric tons of CO2 equivalent out of the atmosphere each year at a cost of roughly $3,600—about $2,300 per ton. That's five to ten times the price per ton of most carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects. We could do the planet a lot more good by investing $600 a year in CDR and leaving our gas boiler untouched.

I suppose I shouldn't give up hope yet. We still have one more quote scheduled for tomorrow, and it's possible we'll get better news from that one (or possibly from the first contractor's quote, which we still haven't received). But if we don't, we have to ask ourselves: how much is it really worth to us to say that we, personally, are not burning fossil fuels in our home? From a purely utilitarian standpoint, isn't it better to stick with our crummy, but cheap, heating (and occasional, expensive cooling) and pay to remove a larger volume of climate pollution somewhere else?

The things I can change

I've always hated the Serenity Prayer. You know, the one that's printed all over on greeting cards, on T-shirts, in people's email signatures: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." It always seemed like such a ridiculous thing to say when we live in a world full of so many horrible things that I clearly can't change and that, just as clearly, are not acceptable. Just because I can't stop war, tyranny, wildfires, tuberculosis, or pointless acts of cruelty, I'm supposed to accept them all as facts of life, the same way Energy Secretary Chris Wright has apparently accepted climate change as just “a side effect of building the modern world"? I'm supposed to feel serene about them? 

But lately, I've begun to think about the lines in a different way—particularly with regard to climate change. In less than eight weeks, the Trump administration has already:

• pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords;
• ordered all references to climate change wiped from government websites;
• canceled billions of dollars' worth of climate and energy grants, even withholding funding from projects that were already under way;
• blocked approval for any new offshore wind projects and revoked authorization for some that had already been approved;
• frozen funding for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program;
• signed executive orders to increase oil and gas drilling and logging in national forests;
• cut thousands of workers from the EPA, NOAA, and the Departments of Energy and the Interior;
• and, most recently, announced plans to repeal the rule that recognizes greenhouse gases are pollutants at all.

Some of these moves are already being challenged in the courts, and many of them will probably be struck down eventually. But I personally can't change them, and sitting around wringing my hands and gnashing my teeth over them won't do any good. I'm not accepting them, not in the sense of seeing them as in any way okay; I'm merely putting them in the category of things that I, right now, cannot do anything about, and setting them aside so I can focus on the things I actually can do.

So, here are three things I'm doing:

1. Pushing for stricter regulation of methane leaks from natural gas pipelines. 

When it comes to methane, there's good news, bad news, and good news. The good news is, we can significantly slow global warming by ending methane leaks from natural gas pipelines. According to one estimate, quickly curbing methane emissions could slow the rate of near-term global warming by 30% and prevent 0.25°C of warming. This can buy us more time to get off fossil fuels and zero out the rest of our carbon emissions. The bad news is, the federal government is moving in exactly the opposite direction. Congress just repealed the Biden-era methane fee that was meant to provide an incentive for gas suppliers to plug leaks, before it even had a chance to go into effect.

But that fee was only ever going to address the biggest leaks, anyway. There are loads of smaller ones that, collectively, have a huge impact. And that's where the other good news comes in: Those small leaks can be tackled at the state level by Public Utilities Commissions (PUCs), which do not answer to the Trump administration. So Climate Changemakers is leading a big push to get people all over the U.S. to email and call their PUCs and ask for stricter regulation on gas leaks. Its website has a series of "playbooks" that can walk you step by step through the process of finding and contacting your PUC, state legislators, and other policy makers. Each playbook only takes around 20 minutes. And because utilities commissioners don't get nearly as much mail as legislators do, they're a lot more likely to pay attention when they suddenly start getting a lot of messages on the same subject. So this is one of those rare actions that's pretty easy and yet has a chance to make a real difference.

2. Donating to effective climate causes.

Some people like to do all their charitable giving once a year, often around the holidays. Others prefer to break it up into a steady stream of regular monthly donations. I like to take a middle ground: I make just one donation a year to every organization on my list, but I spread those donations out over the year so that I only have to make a few each month. And one of the scheduled recipients for March happens to be the Giving Green Fund, which researches and funds climate nonprofits whose strategies are "particularly promising, overlooked and/or underfunded." This allows me to support the most useful and cost-effective climate organizations without having to research them all myself. Also, as Vox notes, funds like Giving Green can time their donations "right when extra funding is most needed"—for instance, when a group is critically short on funds or needs them for a time-sensitive project.

3. Playing board games.

Tomorrow, Brian and I are hosting a board game party for my chapter of Citizens' Climate Lobby. His gift to me last Christmas was a copy of the board game Daybreak, in which each player takes on the role of a major world power and they all work together to find ways to bring down their carbon emissions before the planet tips over the edge into climate disaster. So when Nadine, the head of my chapter, mentioned that she was looking for ideas for the group to have more social get-togethers this year, I suggested a party to play this game together. She has a copy of the game as well, and if we have more people than those two games can handle, we'll open it up to include other cooperative games as well.

Granted, playing games together, even climate-themed games, doesn't directly tackle the problem of climate change. But it will give us a chance to learn more about all the different climate solutions out there, as well as brush up on our teamwork, communication, and problem-solving skills. All of which will help prepare us for the work we're still continuing, even in the face of an administration that openly denies climate change is a problem at all and a Congress that seems, at the moment, ready to cede its own power utterly to that administration. Because even if we know we can't make any major progress for at least two years—even if we know we're going to be losing ground in a lot of ways during that time—what exactly is the alternative?

We don't, in fact, have the wisdom to know whether our efforts will really change anything. But we know they won't if we don't try.

Testing the heat pump waters

Brian and I have known for a while that we want our next home heating system to be an electric heat pump. Last time we replaced our boiler, this wasn't really an option; the heat pumps available at that time were old-fashioned models that struggled to produce heat as the temperature dropped below freezing. But in the ten years since, the situation has changed dramatically. Modern cold-climate heat pumps can run at full strength in temperatures as low as -5F, a temperature that we seldom see here in New Jersey. And, on top of that, the Inflation Reduction Act now offers a 30% tax credit to help pay for them. So we've been assuming that we'd ditch our fossil-fuel boiler whenever it reached the end of its lifespan. However, since it's only ten years old, we figured it would be at least another ten years before we got to that point.

A couple of weeks ago, we got a hint that might not be the case. We'd hired a heating contractor to do a routine tune-up on our heating system, and he informed me that the boiler had some major problems. He showed me a photo he'd taken that appeared to show a significant amount of rust on the heat exchanger, which he said "means there has to be a leak somewhere." Also, he said, the pressure gauge was reading around 20 psi, even though the system was supposed to be at between 12 and 15. To fix this, he claimed, we'd need to replace not just the pressure valve but the entire "trim kit": basically, all the valves, pipes, and other parts that connect to the boiler itself. And then he quoted me a jaw-dropping price for this repair: $3,500.

Well, given that the boiler itself had only cost us less than twice that price in the first place, I started wondering if it would be a better idea to simply replace it. So I went onto HomeAdvisor and put in a request for several contractors to give us quotes on a heat pump system. Unfortunately, I didn't get them. All four of the contractors I spoke with said that it wasn't practical to heat a home with electricity in this area, at least not without a fossil fuel backup. Some claimed that it just couldn't be done—that a heat pump would never be able to keep a house sufficiently warm. Others said it was possible, but the cost would be unreasonably high—as much as double what we were currently paying with gas.

This was baffling to me. I'd done a lot of reading about this topic in the past couple of years, and tons of reliable sources—Consumer Reports, Wirecutter, Yale Climate Connections—had assured me that modern heat pumps could totally handle climates much colder than ours. I'd also crunched some numbers using the Electrification Planner at Rewiring America, and it had estimated that for a home like ours, the costs for heating with a heat pump would be pretty close to what they are with gas. It said we might pay anywhere from $170 more per year to $350 less, with the median household saving $75.

Seeking more data, I made a post in the heat pumps forum on Reddit to ask if anyone else had successfully used a heat pump in our area. I got tons of responses from people as far north as Canada assuring me that they used heat pumps with no backup, no problem. A few people said that I should expect to pay more heating with electricity as opposed to gas, but only one claimed the cost would be prohibitive.

Eventually, I did manage to get one contractor to give me a quote on a heat pump system. I'd done a little research ahead of time to figure out what a reasonable price would be and gotten back a fairly wide range of estimates, so I was prepared to hear anything from around $5,000 to $18,400. You can imagine my shock when I opened the contractor's estimate and saw that he would want over $23,000 to install a ducted system (including the cost of adding new ductwork). A mini-split system, which most sources had said was the cheapest option for homes that lack existing ductwork, was even worse: close to $29,000.

Fortunately, by the time we got this quote, we knew we wouldn't need it. Because we'd learned one other thing from the various contractors who'd come out to our house: the quote the first company gave us for repairs was way, way too high. (Several of them said the company in question was notorious for this.) One of them, after taking a look at our system, said the only part we really needed to replace was the expansion tank, and that would cost less than $400. We eventually hired his company to fix it for a mere $355—about one-tenth of the price we were quoted for the initial repair.

So, the bad news is, we're not going to be ditching our old fossil-fuel boiler this year. The good news is, we don't have to make any decisions about replacing it under time pressure. We can afford to wait at least a few more years, and perhaps by the time we're ready, there will be more installers in New Jersey who are actually familiar with modern cold-climate heat pumps and can install one for a decent price. Or, who knows, by then there might actually be air-to-water heat pumps on the market that can work with our existing radiators, so we can simply swap one in for the old boiler with no need to alter the rest of the system.

Now we're cooking without gas

For some years now, we've been waffling over the question of when to start electrifying our home. Not adding electricity to it, that is, but replacing our old gas-burning appliances with electric ones. It's a bit of an ecofrugal dilemma, because electrical appliances are clearly better for the planet, but not better for our budget. According to the Personal Electrification Planner tool from Rewiring America, replacing all our gas appliances (boiler, water heater, dryer, and stove) with electric ones would cost us over $15,000, after tax credits—and on top of that, it would add an extra $200 per year to our utility bills.

And the cost isn't the only challenge—particularly where our gas stove is concerned. It may be old, inefficient, and polluting, but it also works during a power outage, something no electric stove can do. I was reluctant to give up that fail-safe for the sake of a possibly faster, possibly cleaner cooking experience. So, while I figured we'd have to upgrade to an induction stove whenever this one bit the dust (which, considering its age, could be any day now), I wasn't keen to junk it any sooner than I had to.

But recently, I realized there was a middle ground. Rather than replace this stove outright, we could supplement it with a stand-alone induction burner. This would only cost around $100 and wouldn't require any rewiring of the kitchen. We could use the induction burner for most of our cooking tasks, while keeping the gas as a backup. It could step in during a power outage and also handle any job that called for multiple burners and/or a piece of cookware that wasn't induction-compatible.

I consulted several sources for recommendations on which induction burner to buy, and all of them had good things to say about the $110 Duxtop 9600LS. However, the slightly older and cheaper Duxtop 9100MC had most of the same features, and the ones it lacked—like touch-screen controls and a 10-hour timer—were ones I didn't think we'd have much use for. Plus, its slightly larger size looked like it might come in handy for our big Dutch oven. So I ordered that one for a mere $88.49 (including tax), and two days later, it arrived on our doorstep. We plunked it down on the counter right next to the stove, plugged it in, and we were ready to cook.

So far, we've used it for just a handful of tasks: boiling water, making pasta, cooking an omelet, and simmering a pot of soup. Although the controls are quite simple (just set set a pot on it, turn it on, and push the buttons to adjust the heat up or down), we faced a bit of a learning curve in figuring out what settings to use. On high heat (9 or 10 out of 10), it boiled a half-full teakettle noticeably faster than the gas stove, yet it seemed to take longer to bring a full pot of water up to a rolling boil for cooking pasta. Brian also discovered that this heat setting, which he thought was comparable to what he would use for an omelet on the gas stove, is decidedly too high for this purpose on the induction burner. The omelet came out rather torched, and he had to haul out our giant fan to clear the smoke out of the kitchen. (So much for improving our indoor air quality.)

This revealed another weakness of the induction-plus-gas setup: With the burner sitting next to the range, the hood can't clear away steam and fumes. We couldn't fix this by setting the burner on top of the stove because of the risk that we might accidentally turn on the flame. We thought maybe we could get around that by removing the knobs of the stove burners, but there was another problem: according to the instruction manual, the burner couldn't be placed directly on any metal surface. And putting a board on top of the existing stove grates wouldn't work either, because the burner also couldn't rest on any surface that could be flammable. 

Eventually, though, we found a work-around. We still had a few of the big porcelain tiles left over from our downstairs bathroom renovation, and it turned out that one of those was just large enough for the induction burner to fit on. So, to cook the soup, Brian set the tile on top of the stove burners, set the induction burner on top of the tile, and removed the stove knobs to eliminate any risk of accidents. This allowed the soup to simmer away merrily on top of the burner while the range hood vented away the steam. 

Unfortunately, we can't just leave this setup in place full-time, since the induction burner can't be sitting on top of the range while the oven is in use. Instead, we've stashed the ceramic tile in the cabinet underneath our big cast-iron skillet, ready to grab whenever we want to cook an actual dish on the burner. If we're just using it to boil a kettle of water, it can stay next to the stove instead.

It's too early to say yet whether this little burner will save us energy or money. We plugged it into our Kill-a-Watt meter just to get an idea of its energy use, and we found that it draws 7.5 amps and 850 watts on the 5 setting and 11 amps, 1.25 kilowatts on 9. But we don't have much idea how that compares to the amount of energy our gas stove uses. We'll check and see if there's any noticeable change in our gas or electric use on our next utility bill, but I suspect the difference will be too small to detect.

However, we have identified a couple of other advantages to using the induction burner. First, it's remarkably easy to adjust. We already knew that induction stoves were much more sensitive than regular electric ones, which take quite a long time to heat up or cool down when you change the temperature setting. But Brian thinks this one is actually easier to control than our gas stove. When he turns the knob on the gas stove to, say, 6, the actual size of the flame won't be exactly the same every time. It may sputter or waver, so its heat output won't be consistent. But if he sets the induction burner to 6, he knows he'll get exactly the same level of heat he got the last time, and it will be even across the entire surface of the pan.

Second, nearly all of that heat will get transferred directly to the contents of the pot. Little or none of it will dissipate into the surrounding air—a major perk during a hot summer like this. Even the pot handles and lids don't get nearly as hot on this induction burner as they do over a gas flame. When Brian cooked the omelet on this burner in our cast-iron skillet, the bottom of the pan got really hot (a bit too hot, in fact), but the handle was still cool enough to grasp with his bare hand. Likewise, I've noticed that when I boil the kettle on the induction burner, I don't need to use a pot holder to lift and pour from it the way I do when I heat it over gas.

So, while this little induction burner isn't going to replace our gas stove entirely, we suspect we'll be using it in future for the majority of our frying, boiling, and simmering. And, almost as important, it will provide a valuable fail-safe. We've known for some time that the gas range was nearing the end of its life; one of the buttons on its control panel has already failed, and if the next one to go out is the one that turns on the oven, that will be game over. But thanks to this little burner, we'll have something to cook on while we go through the process of finding a replacement—and making any necessary upgrades to our electrical system so we can get it installed.

Why climate scientists are losing hope—and why they're wrong

A week ago, I was feeling incredibly depressed and pessimistic about climate change. I'd just read a piece in the Guardian in which top climate scientists shared their views about the future, and they were almost uniformly bleak. Nearly all agreed that there was no chance now of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and most thought that realistically, there never had been. Many thought warming would exceed 3 degrees, and one said even that number was "hopeful and conservative." They predicted a "semi-dystopian" future in which large swaths of the globe would become uninhabitable and billions of people would die or be displaced.

For many of these scientists, the most frustrating thing was knowing that this didn't have to happen. They talked about how they'd been sounding the alarm for decades at this point, and still world leaders were dragging their feet. One expressed incredulity that the world was willing to spend trillions to deal with COVID but couldn't muster several billion to address a far more existential threat. One said it was "almost impossible not to feel hopeless and broken"; another was "relieved that I do not have children, knowing what the future holds." A third confessed that she considered giving up her climate work, which seemed to be having no impact at all, and becoming a nightclub singer.

All this had me questioning whether there was even any point in trying to deal with this problem anymore. And then a member of my Citizens' Climate Lobby chapter posted a link to an episode of "The Ezra Klein Show" that offered a completely different perspective. In it, Klein interviews another climate scientist, Hannah Ritchie, who has recently published a book called Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. Their discussion brought out several highly convenient truths that don't often get mentioned in the climate discussion:

• First, it's simply not true that nothing has been done about climate change. She pointed out that before the 2015 Paris Agreement, scientists were predicting "completely catastrophic" levels of global warming—between 4 and 5 degrees Celsius. Today, those estimates have fallen to between 2.5 and 3 degrees. She acknowledges that this is still very, very bad, but it's no longer in world-ending territory. Even though most nations have fallen short of their Paris goals, we've still "chopped off a degree" or more from the worst-case scenario we were looking at less than a decade ago.
• While it's almost guaranteed that we will breach the 1.5-degree threshold, that doesn't mean it's too late to avert disaster. That's because the impact of global warming —how much rising temperatures affect precipitation, storm strength, and other problems—isn't linear. Going from 1.5 to 2 degrees is much worse than going from 1 to 1.5 degrees. So not only are we not too late, what we do now matters more than ever. Every tenth of a degree that we can shave off our temperature trajectory means a much bigger difference to our future than it did before.
• One of the biggest problems—switching to clean energy—is already more or less cracked. Not only do we have wind and solar and electric cars, these technologies are now better and cheaper than fuel-burning alternatives—something that wasn't true just five years ago. So it's not true that we've had these solutions for years and haven't deployed them; we've only just now reached the point where we have cost-effective alternatives that can replace fossil fuels without holding back human progress. Now all we have to do is build them.
• Some people object that we can't simply rely on the clean energy sources we have now, because we don't have enough of the critical minerals required. This too is false, says Ritchie. In the first place, we keep finding new deposits of the minerals we need and new ways to extract them. In the second place, the amount of material needed for each new battery or solar panel keeps dropping as the technology improves. And finally, unlike fossil fuels, these minerals don't get used up. When a solar panel reaches the end of its usable life, we can extract the contents and use them again.
• Another common objection is that we don't have the space for all the solar farms and wind farms we'd need to power our whole country. But while solar and wind farms do take up more space than fossil fuel plants, the footprint of a fossil fuel plant isn't limited to the plant itself; you also have to consider all the land used for extracting the fuel. Right now, says Ritchie, we're using lots more land for other energy sources than we would need to produce all our power from solar and wind. One mind-blowing statistic: if you took all the land currently being devoted to producing not-that-efficient biofuels and covered it in solar panels, it could power the U.S. three times over.

Ritchie admits that we don't have all the answers yet. We know how to produce low-carbon electricity, but we don't know yet how to produce low-carbon cement, steel, jet fuel, or meat. (She also acknowledges that simply getting everyone to go vegan, as she has done, is a nonstarter. People don't care much about what powers their cars or heats their homes, but they do care a lot about what they eat.) But she stresses that this shouldn't stop us from rolling out the clean technologies we do have as fast as we can. There's no reason we can't tackle the problems we know how to solve and look for new solutions to other problems at the same time.

Klein's conversation with Ritchie covers a lot more than this, from air pollution to nuclear energy to some knotty issues related to meat consumption. (For instance, is it worse to eat beef, which has a much higher carbon footprint, or chicken, which requires killing a lot more animals?) It's worth listening to the whole thing, or reading the transcript if you aren't into podcasts. 

But the main takeaway for me is that we haven't lost the climate battle yet. Yes, things are already bad, and yes, they are going to get worse. But what we do in the next ten years will make a huge difference, for good or bad. And to a large extent, we have our work cut out for us.

Ecofrugal episodes

The ecofrugal life, as I've observed before, is a series of little ups and downs. This past week or so, we've had a series of small wins—including some that started out as losses—and one small win that turned into a loss, but can probably be reversed. Here's a play-by-play:

Ecofrugal Episode 1: The Stealth Vampire

Remember how we got a free home energy checkup back in August that included a bunch of free LED light bulbs? Well, this ended up having an odd secondary effect—one that we didn't notice until the nights started getting longer.

Early one morning, while it was still dark, Brian got up to use the bathroom. On his way back to bed, he passed the spare bedroom and noticed something odd: the lamp in there, which was turned off at the wall switch, was ever so faintly glowing in the darkened room. When he went up to it and turned off the lamp's switch, the light went out. But when he turned it back on, the hint of light came back. (I couldn't get a picture of this phenomenon because the light was so faint, but imagine it as a vague, dim aura, just barely bright enough for the eye to detect.)

We couldn't remember this lamp, or any other lamp ever plugged into that same outlet, ever doing this before. But up until recently, the light in that room has always been a fluorescent bulb, not an LED. So Brian's theory is that the wall switch is faulty, allowing just the faintest trickle of current through even when it's turned off—but in the past, that tiny bit of current wasn't enough to activate the bulb. Only now, with our new ultra-efficient LEDs, is it detectable. He tried plugging the lamp into our Kill-a-Watt meter to see how much current it was actually drawing, but once he did that, the faint light went out completely. Apparently that tiny bit of extra resistance was enough to block the current.

So, this ecofrugal win (free LEDs) turned out to be a bit of a loss (a stealthy energy vampire). But it's not much of a loss, since these LEDs use only a tiny bit of electricity even when fully powered, and presumably an even tinier bit when they're only barely lit. And it should be easy enough to eliminate completely by replacing the light switch, a fix that will only cost a few bucks.

Ecofrugal Episode 2: Vegan brown butter

Back in 2018, Brian and I discovered a really delicious recipe for pasta with butternut squash and brown butter. However, we have mostly gone off dairy at this point, and most plant butters (including our new homemade plant butter) don't brown. And it's the brown butter that really makes this dish special. Without it, it's just pasta with squash—reasonably tasty, but nothing to write home about.

But recently, I found a hack online for making vegan brown butter. The trick is to add a spoonful of nut butter, which provides the proteins and sugars needed for the browning reaction. It sounded worth a try, so we picked up a jar of almond butter at Costco, which we knew we could use up even if the recipe didn't work. 

Integrating this vegan brown butter into the pasta recipe was a little tricky. The protocol is designed to make the brown butter by itself, but the pasta recipe browns the butter in the pan with the squash. Brian compromised by making the brown butter first, then adding it to the pan with the squash as it cooked. And it worked! The vegan version of the recipe had the same rich, complex flavor as the original. Take that, dairy industry!

Ecofrugal Episode 3: Board-game bonanza

This ecofrugal win started out with a loss: Brian's year-old boots, which he was expecting to last him through several winters, have developed a leak that Shoe Goo has proved unable to repair. (The Wolverine name is no guarantee of quality, apparently.) Initially, we thought the ecofrugal solution to this problem would be to buy him a really good pair of boots with Goodyear welt construction, which would allow them to be resoled. I did a little bit of research on Reddit and learned that for this kind of boot, you should expect to pay a minimum of $250. (There's one well-reviewed brand, Thursday Boots, that starts at $200, but it's not available in stores; you can only order it online, which makes finding your perfect fit a real hassle.)

Now, for a pair of boots that will last ten years, this isn't such an unreasonable price. But after his experience with the Wolverines, Brian was feeling a bit distrustful of high-end brands. He thought that before shelling out for an expensive pair of new boots, we should at least make the rounds of local thrift stores and see what they had to offer.

What does this have to do with board games, you ask? Well, the first thrift store we visited was the one at our local Reformed Church, only a mile from our house. Their selection is quite small, but their prices are outstanding, so if we happened on a suitable pair here, we knew it would be a bargain. Unfortunately, we had no such luck; there were very few pairs of men's shoes on the rack, and none in Brian's size. But while we were there, we decided to check out the rack of board games in the back room, and there we hit the mother lode. 

Someone had obviously just cleaned out their board game collection and donated the lot to the thrift store, because in amongst the usual motley assortment of old Scrabble and Monopoly sets, we found several like-new games. Three of them, in fact, were still in their original shrink wrap; two others were open but obviously hadn't been played much. I don't want to disclose exactly what we got for fear of holiday spoilers, but we scored five new, interesting-looking games (two that we'd played before and three that were new to us), for only five bucks. So even though we didn't find what we were looking for, it was well worth the trip.

Ecofrugal Episode 4: Boots made for walking

Exciting as this thrift-store adventure was, it still left Brian without footwear. So, in the afternoon, we set out in the car to check out the Goodwill store in Bound Brook (the same one we visited for our anniversary). And there, Brian found not one but two pairs of boots that fit him reasonably well: a pair of Timberland hiking boots and a dressier leather pair originally from Banana Republic. Both were in excellent condition, and each was priced at a mere $20.

Each of these pairs had its own pros and cons. Brian slightly preferred the look of the Banana boots, but the way they were constructed made them a bit of a hassle to get on and off. The Timberlands were more convenient, but definitely casual in appareance, which meant he probably couldn't wear them for any kind of slightly formal occasion. When I asked him which pair felt more like the boots he'd want to reach for every day, he said the Timberlands were probably better, but he didn't seem happy about it. 

At that point, I proposed the solution he'd secretly been hoping for: just buy them both. That way, he could use the hiking boots as a casual, everyday shoe, and the Banana ones could be his dress boots. And at only $20 a pop, the two pairs together would cost less than half what he'd paid for his current pair of Wolverines that had let him down so dreadfully.

When we got these home, I did a little searching online to figure out just how good a deal we'd gotten. I found that a comparable pair of Timberlands would cost around $120 at full price, while similar boots from Banana Republic would run around $250. In short, we just acquired $370 worth of footwear for a mere $40—about 11% of retail.

Sadly, with my weird feet, I'd never be able to pull off this kind of ecofrugal shoe coup myself. But I can at least bask in the reflected glory of Brian's success. And if we end up having to blow a couple of hundred bucks on my next pair of winter boots, the $200 or so we didn't spend on boots for Brian will balance it out.

A farewell to CFLs

This week, Brian and I received a free "Quick Home Energy Check-up" from our utility. Basically, they sent a guy out to our house who looked at our heating system, insulation, appliances, and so on, and made recommendations about ways to save energy. Most of what we learned from this was not news to us. Overall, our home is pretty efficient: our attic is well insulated, our faucets low-flow, our appliances mostly up-to-date. The contractor pointed out a couple of changes worth making (sealing the attic hatch and repairing a compromised double-glazed window) and one that we don't consider worth making (replacing our water heater solely on the grounds that it's over 10 years old, which I already knew was rubbish. We do eventually want to replace it with an electric one, ideally an efficient heat pump model, in order to get our whole house off of fossil fuels, but I see no reason to rush the process.)

The best part, though, was that we got a bunch of free stuff. As part of the checkup process, the checker-up made a whole series of minor efficiency upgrades on the spot. He insulated the one bit of our water heater's pipe that wasn't wrapped already and replaced both our 2.5-gpm shower heads with shiny new 1.5-gpm models that have proved just as effective and satisfying to use. And he replaced all our old compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) with new LED bulbs. Or at least, almost all.

We'd already installed LEDs in the fixtures where we thought they'd make most difference in terms of lifespan, looks, or performance. But other fixtures still contained CFLs, since we already had a bunch of them and figured we might as well use them up before replacing them. So this helpful fellow went through and upgraded the bulbs in our living room table lamps, our guest room lamp, and all the fixtures downstairs—all, that is, except the overhead fixture nearest the stairs. On that one, he spent several minutes turning the "nipple" that held the cover in place, and it just would not come off. It turned freely, but it refused to part ways with the bolt it was attached to. It was a baffling problem, one he'd never encountered before in 15 years on the job, and eventually he had to leave those last two lonely CFLs in place.

After he left, though, Brian messed around with the light for a bit and eventually managed to get the cover off. (He just grabbed the nut with his locking pliers and kept turning the entire bolt assembly until it unscrewed at the other end.) And once he had the light reassembled, he was able to replace those last two CFLs with two extra LEDs that had been removed from the fixture in our downstairs bathroom. (They didn't quite match, so the contractor had replaced them with a matched set of nicer-looking LED globes.) And with that, our interior lighting was finally 100 percent LED-based. 

This left us with a new problem: what to do with all our old CFLs. We had a pretty big collection of them, some left over from previous bulk purchases and some that we'd removed from the fixtures we'd already upgraded to LEDs, and there was no real chance we'd ever use them again. Normally, when we have stuff we no longer need, I try to Freecycle it, but I had a hard time believing anyone would want these old CFLs now that LEDs are so cheap and readily available. (You can buy them at Home Depot for as little as $1.75 apiece now, which is less than we paid for most of our CFLs.) And, as Brian pointed out, even if someone took them just because they were free, they wouldn't be taking the place of less efficient incandescent bulbs; as of this year, those are no longer on the market. All they'd be doing is delaying the transition to the still more efficient, longer-lasting, less-hazardous LEDs. So in the end, we bundled up the lot and hauled them all to the nearest Home Depot for recycling. 

We also brought with us two other CFLs that the contractor hadn't replaced: the two in the exterior light by our kitchen door. We figured if we going to Home Depot anyway, we might as well look for LED replacements for these bulbs as well. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to us to measure the fixtures first, so the pair of EcoSmart bulbs we picked up for $15 turned out to be too wide to fit—and we'd already disposed of the old CFLs. Fortunately, we had another exterior fixture by the patio door, so we just installed the new LED floodlight bulbs in that one. Then we transferred the two ancient incandescent floodlight bulbs from that fixture, which had been there since we bought the house and possibly for several years before that, to the side door.

So now, ironically, the only fixture at our house that doesn't have LEDs is still using old, ridiculously inefficient incandescents. But since that light doesn't get used very often, it's not that big a deal. We can pick up some new LED bulbs for it (that actually fit) the next time we're at a home store, and dispose of the old bulbs with our regular household trash. And at that point, we'll finally move all our home's lighting into the twenty-first century.

Doing the same for our heating and plumbing, now, that will be a much bigger job. But at least we've made a start.

What's the most ecofrugal car?

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I didn't post anything last weekend. That's because we were away visiting some friends down in the D.C. area. Like us, these folks are eco-conscious, and in two major ways, they're ahead of us on the green scale: their house has solar panels, and they drive a plug-in hybrid car. Brian and I have already determined that solar panels aren't really an option for us, and we've now subscribed to a community solar project instead. But on the way home, we got into a discussion of whether we could be driving something more ecofrugal than our small, fairly fuel-efficient Honda Fit. If we had to replace the Fit this year, we wondered, what would we get instead?

Last time we had to make this decision, back around the beginning of 2011, we decided a hybrid car wasn't worth the added cost. It was much more cost-effective to buy an inexpensive, fuel-efficient gas-powered car and pay a little extra for carbon offsets. But since then, the math has changed. Electric vehicles, both battery-powered and plug-in, have grown steadily cheaper, and experts are predicting that they could reach price parity with gasoline vehicles as early as this year. And electric cars were already cheaper than gas vehicles to fuel and maintain. So, in theory, the most ecofrugal ride would be a small car like our Fit, but one that we can plug in to power it.

But in practice, it's not that simple. Because while electric cars are getting cheaper and more prevalent, most of the choices are battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Buy one of these, and you're limited by its driving range. The EV charging network is much bigger than it used to be, but charging stations—especially the ultrafast kind that can power a car in "as little as 30 minutes"—are still nowhere near as easy to find as gas stations. And even if you can find one of these fast chargers, half an hour to refuel is much slower than filling up the tank with gas.

True, today's BEVs have much longer ranges than before, but it's still not always possible to avoid charging up while on the road. Even the longest-range BEV, the $87,000 Lucid Air, can't go more than 520 miles on a charge—not enough to get us all the way to Indianapolis. More affordable options, like the Chevy Bolt or the Nissan Leaf, can go between 200 and 250 miles, which would require us to recharge at least two or three times en route to Indy at a minimum of half an hour per stop. A shorter trip, like the one we made last weekend, might be possible on a single charge, provided we could plug the car in at our destination. But we probably wouldn't want to count on it.

So, if our Fit were to die tomorrow, there's no BEV that could replace it for all our driving. Our best choice would be a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), which would allow us to do most of our driving on battery power alone and have the gas tank as a backup for longer trips. What we'd really love is a PHEV version of our current car, the Fit—a hatchback with folding seats that combines fuel efficiency with ample storage space. But unfortunately, no such car exists. (Non-plug-in hybrid versions of the Fit are available in some parts of the world, but not only does Honda not offer them in the US, it no longer offers the gasoline version either.) 

In fact, there's no PHEV on the market that's even remotely similar to the Fit. When you search for "PHEV hatchback," the only model you find is the Hyundai Ioniq, which is no longer available; Hyundai now makes the all-electric version only. Lists of the top PHEVs at sites like Edmunds and US News are dominated by SUVs and luxury cars, with only one non-luxury sedan (the Prius Prime) making the cut. The closest thing to our Fit would be a smallish "crossover" SUV like the Kia Niro, but it's still an SUV, and we hate SUVs. Even an electric SUV that doesn't guzzle gas is still big, heavy, clumsy, hard to park, and dangerous to everyone else on the road. We just aren't SUV people, and we never will be.

After discussing this dilemma a bit, Brian proposed another solution: We could get a BEV as our main car and keep the Fit as a backup. The vast majority of all trips we make are well within the range of the Bolt or the Leaf, so we'd only need the Fit for long drives. But there are obvious downsides to this plan as well. Although our driveway is technically big enough for two cars, it's a tight fit, and keeping two cars parked there all year round would leave us with no place to dump the snow after a big snowfall. (Not that we've had any of those this winter, but we can't assume it's ceased to be a problem.) And even if we weren't driving it often, the Fit would still need insurance and at least some maintenance every year. So owning two cars would definitely be more expensive than owning just one, even a more expensive one.

Perhaps a better option would be to buy a BEV and plan to rent a car for long trips. Renting a car for just a few trips every year would be a bit of a hassle, but almost certainly cheaper than maintaining and insuring a second car year round. And we might not have to keep doing it indefinitely, since the charging network could eventually get good enough to make taking the BEV all the way to Indy a reasonable option. Our biggest concern is that this may not happen by the time gas-powered cars are phased out completely. Then it will be impractical to drive across the country with our BEV and impossible to rent a gas-powered car for the purpose. Under those circumstances, our only choices will be to fly out to Indy for the holidays—which has a much bigger carbon footprint than driving a fuel-efficient car with two people in it—or make the drive significantly longer than it is now, possibly spanning multiple days. Or, I guess, stay home.

Of the electric options available now, this BEV-plus-rental setup is probably the best. But for us, it seems like the best approach of all is to keep our little Fit running as long as possible. Then we can hope that, by the time we're finally ready to replace it, there will be more options that actually work for us: either PHEVs that fit our preferences or EVs and chargers that can reasonably take us 700 miles in one day. Our failure to jump on the EV bandwagon right now may damage our green cred, but it gives us the best chance of making the switch in a way that will work for us long-term. And you can buy an awful lot of carbon offsets for the price of an EV you're not really happy with.

Now we're (still) cooking with gas

This past Tuesday was my birthday, and one of my gifts was a subscription to the Washington Post. I'd asked for this specifically because my mom, who is a Post subscriber, keeps sending me links to articles she finds interesting, and I can never read them because the Post only allows non-subscribers to view one free article per month. And one of the first articles I was able to read with that new subscription was an op-ed from writer Tove Danovich entitled "I bought an induction stove. Then the power went out." 

You probably won't be able to read the piece if you're not a subscriber yourself, so I'll just sum it up briefly: Like many people, Danovich recently jumped on the bandwagon and swapped out her gas stove for an induction stove powered by electricity. And like most people who do this, she went on and on to her friends about how wonderful it was: so fast, so responsive, so easy to clean! Why would anyone ever choose gas? Then, as foreshadowed in the headline, she got an answer to that question when a storm knocked out her electricity—a problem she says she'd never once experienced before in her Portland, Oregon home. With no way to cook a meal or even brew a pot of coffee, she was driven out into the storm "in search of caffeine." 

Despite the headline, this story itself occupies only the first few paragraphs of the article. Danovich spends the rest of it explaining why, even after this incident, she's still absolutely convinced that ditching her old gas stove was the right thing to do. Gas stoves, she points out, emit pollutants that are dangerous to both our health and to the planet—though she's a little unclear on exactly why. (She seems to think the reason they've been linked to childhood asthma is that they "constantly leak methane," even when they're not running; in fact, the primary compound responsible is nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, which is produced only when the gas is burned.) She maintains that the reason most people continue to cling to their gas stoves is that they're snobs who don't want to give up their "high-end status symbols." For her, the fact that they don't work during a power outage is at most a minor inconvenience, not something that would ever deter any reasonable person from making the switch.

Unfortunately, I cannot dismiss this problem so easily. In fact, it's the main reason I haven't seriously considered replacing my own (not at all high-end) gas stove. 

I know that global warming is the single biggest threat currently facing humanity—perhaps even the biggest threat we've ever faced. I know that keeping the overall temperature rise below 1.5°C (2.7°F) is our best chance to avoid the deadliest impacts of climate change. And I know that we have no chance of meeting this goal unless we completely eliminate fossil fuel use—including my trusty gas stove—by 2050.

But I also know that no matter what we do, we can't avoid all the impacts of global warming. Many of them are already here, and even if we manage to meet the 1.5°C target, they won't go away. One of the effects we've already begun to see is more frequent and more powerful storms—the kind of storms that tend to result in power outages. Already, here in our New Jersey home, we experience power outages regularly—in extreme cases, several in a week. The one triggered by Superstorm Sandy lasted 24 hours at our house, and we got off easy; some of our neighbors were without power for days. 

One of the reason we made it through these disasters relatively unscathed was that our stove continued to work (except for the electric igniters, but we could easily light the burners with a match), so we didn't have to go hungry. Our battery-powered emergency gadgets can provide us with light, communication, even entertainment, but we don't have a backup for the stove. And with global warming increasing the odds that there will be more superstorms in our future, going without a backup seems more unwise than ever. (In fact, while so many of my fellow environmentalists are exulting about going all-electric and capping off the gas lines to their homes, getting fossil fuels out of their lives forever, I've actually gone the other way, adding a natural gas fireplace to our home specifically as an emergency heat source.)

This is why it frustrates me so much that environmentalists have chosen gas stoves, out of all the gas-burning appliances in a home, to fixate on. Even though cooking is responsible for only a tiny percentage of household natural gas use, they seem to think that they should attack stove use first because a stove is easier to replace than an entire heating system, and therefore it's an easier sell. But for me, the stove is much harder to replace than the heating system or anything else that runs on gas—and that's entirely due to the fear of power outages. My gas heating system, which is a much bigger offender than the stove, would be much costlier to replace, but much easier to get along without. It's useless in a power outage anyway because it relies on an electric heat pump to circulate the water, so I wouldn't be risking anything by replacing it with a more efficient electric heat pump. Replacing my gas dryer with an electric one would likewise pose no risk, since I can't do laundry anyway if the washer isn't working. The gas water heater would be a little harder to part with, since it allows me to enjoy a hot shower during a power outage, but that's a luxury I can manage without for a couple of days if I have to. But without my gas stove, no electricity means no hot water, no hot coffee, and no hot food. And if the power outage is due to a severe storm, I can't even leave the house to get these things.

There is one possible way out of this dilemma: find a backup system for cooking, similar to the gas fireplace that serves as a backup for heating. I've looked into this before, but most of the sources I found suggested either hauling out the charcoal grill or cooking with a solar oven—both options that won't work in the middle of a severe storm. However, after reading Danovich's piece, I decided it was worth digging into the topic a little bit more. And this time, I managed to track down an article on the self-sufficiency site Common Sense Home that offered a couple of ideas that were at least technically feasible. The first option, a flameless heater designed for use with MREs (meals ready to eat), wouldn't be ideal for us because we probably couldn't find any MREs that would fit our dietary needs. But the second, a camp stove that could be used with canned fuel (such as Sterno), seemed to have some merit. A quick search revealed that I could buy a folding stove for around $10 and a dozen cans of Sterno (good for 6 hours each) for around $40. Together, these would enable us to enjoy hot meals with neither gas nor electricity for a week or more.

Of course, even with this backup, we still wouldn't be able to go fully all-electric at home, since the gas fireplace would still have to stay. But since it's only there for an emergency backup, it wouldn't be used very often. Of course, if America actually does get its act sufficiently together to eliminate fossil fuel use entirely, we'd eventually lose our gas service and have to find an alternative, but I'm sure we'd have plenty of time to figure that out.

But even if swapping out our gas stove is a viable option, I remain unconvinced that it's crucial to do it immediately. Yes, there is definitely a link between NO2 from gas stoves and asthma. But we don't have asthma, and we don't have children at risk of developing it. And we do have a decent range hood, which (according to the experts at both Good Housekeeping and Wirecutter) can remove most of the dangerous fumes associated with cooking. 

I do want and intend to go all-electric at home eventually. But given that our gas boiler and water heater are responsible for the lion's share of our fossil fuel use—and that there's a much better technology available to replace them—I think those, not the much-maligned gas stove, should be our primary targets.

Why green Americans should want permitting reform

Way back in 2016, I posted about how I was hunting for a magazine with an ecofrugal spin. Unfortunately, I never really found one I was happy with. But over the years since then, I've searched again from time to time, and last January I thought I might have found a solution. By becoming a member of Green America, I'd automatically get a subscription to its Green American magazine, which covers a range of topics related to climate, social justice, and green living. Even if it wasn't exactly what I wanted, at least my subscription fee would go to support a worthy environmental organization.

So, the year went by, and I was reasonably satisfied with the magazine—not utterly delighted, but I thought it was good enough to be worth the membership fee. Being a member also meant that I would periodically receive emails urging me to take action on various environmental issues, but I didn't really mind that. I'd occasionally click through if I thought the issue was worthy of attention, and if I didn't, I'd just hit delete. Until this week, when this message from Green America brought me up short:

Tell Your Senator to Block Manchin's Dirty Deal

Senator Joe Manchin’s “Dirty Deal” is back and, if passed, would put front-line communities at greater risk and increase greenhouse gases by “streamlining” the approval process for fossil fuel projects. The senator wants to dismantle the policies in place that are meant to protect communities and mitigate the climate crisis. We need to stop it ASAP.

So, you may ask, what's wrong with that? Shouldn't an environmentalist like me want to stop new fossil fuel infrastructure? I mean, if we want to transition to a clean energy economy, isn't blocking fossil fuel projects a crucial part of that?

No. No it isn't.

The fact is, fossil fuel projects are already on the decline. And it's not because environmentalists have been vigilant about blocking them; they're just too expensive. At this point, the cheapest ways to generate electricity are solar and wind. In 2021, 85% of all new energy capacity came from clean sources, mostly solar. And of the new projects currently in the "queue"—that is, proposed projects waiting to be approved—over 92% are wind and solar. Natural gas accounts for only 7.5% of the total, and coal for none whatsoever.

But here's the catch: Most of these proposed clean energy projects will never be built. And the main reason why is problems with permitting—not just for the plants themselves, but for the power lines they need to carry their energy.

You see, the best places to put new solar and wind farms are out in the country, where there's lots of room for them. But in order to get the energy from these facilities to cities, where it's needed, you need new transmission lines—a lot of new transmission lines. According to Princeton University's Net Zero America project, we need to more than triple the rate at which we're building new transmission lines in order to support a fully renewable power grid by 2050. If we continue to build them at our current, slow rate, we'll miss out on about 80% of all the emissions cuts promised by the Inflation Reduction Act. In fact, fossil fuel use in the U.S. will actually increase, because we'll have to burn more coal and gas to meet the increased demand for electricity from all those electric cars and heat pumps.

But right now, getting those new power lines built is a long, slow, cumbersome process. On average, getting a new long-distance transmission line built takes over ten years. And over four of those years are spent just getting all the necessary permits. If a transmission line runs between states, you have to get separate permits from each state government—and often from municipal governments too—before you can even start building. Each of these governments has its own rules about permitting, usually involving extensive environmental review. And a project can be challenged at any step of the process, tying it up in court for years.

Approval for fossil fuel pipelines tends to go significantly faster. These can be approved at the federal level by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The Energy Independence and Security Act would have allowed FERC to approve interstate transmission lines and also to intervene in fights over who should pay for them. But because the same bill also contained some provisions that would have helped fossil fuel suppliers, environmental groups—including Green America—have labeled this a "dirty deal" and lobbied heavily against it, blocking it not once but twice. Even though the bill's benefits would have gone overwhelmingly to clean power projects, and even though failure to improve the grid will actually make emissions worse, they decided that it was the principle of the thing that mattered.

Consequently, I will not be renewing my membership in Green America after all. Even if I really liked the quarterly magazine—and frankly, it was just okay—I'm not giving one penny of my money to any group that is actually working to stop the reforms we desperately need to achieve a carbon-free economy.