The future is coming, even if you don’t believe in it
CC0 Public Domain
The problem with the future is that it’s like the seeker in hide-and-seek — it always comes, whether you’re ready or not. Change comes in spurts, like old ketchup shaken from a bottle. Like ketchup, you can anticipate the sudden spurting of the sauce, and position your plate strategically, or you can grumble about the mess of red tomato goop all over your salad.
William Gibson famously said “The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.” [1]
A corollary to that might be that the future arrives in lumps, sometimes overnight (the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Hiroshima atomic bomb), other times materializing slowly, while we are looking the other way, as is the case with the transition to an all-renewable-energy society.
Whether we know it or not, whether we believe it or not, the new, all-electric future is already here. Entire nations run for days on renewable energy, now. Bicycles and tricycles and cars and scooters and one wheel unicycles and skateboards all have electric motors, now. Stoves have batteries. Heat pumps power industrial processes. Steel is made in arc furnaces and towns store summer heat in giant batteries to warm homes in winter. These things are happening now.
As the sun sets on petrol, it rises on batteries
You personally may not believe the petrol-powered vehicles are going to be replaced by battery-powered vehicles, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world feels the same way. How does the rest of the world feel? It’s easy — just look at the sales numbers in 2025. While newspaper headlines may trumpet “EV slowdown!”, the days of petrol cars are in fact coming to an end. Newspapers need to create drama — a steady uptick of sales of EVs accompanied by a steady decline of ICE vehicles isn’t very newsworthy. If you’re wondering where these upticks are taking place (because your local news outlet is telling you EV owners are abandoning their EVs to go back ICE), just do a quick search on international EV sales numbers. That’s the rest of the world voting with their pocket books. This is not people “going back”. This is people going forwards.
One might counter with the fact that Norway forced their citizens to buy EVs, and that would be somewhat right. They forced people into EV ownership with policy. Their policy incentives made ownership of a fossil fuel vehicle expensive and impractical compared to EVs. It doesn’t matter whether that policy position was moral or ethical or economic because it has been enacted, and now the Norwegian people no longer buy petrol-powered vehicles. [9] The future has already arrived in Norway, and while there are a fair number of Norwegians who don’t believe in it [11], it is a fait accompli.
You can’t have your own petrol station, but you can be your own electric company.
Once your home is fully electric, you no longer need fossil fuels. Once your home is electric, you can generate your own power, or buy it from your neighbor. You could start a collective and borrow money to start your own solar farm. You can do these things, or you could just buy electricity from a company that does the work for you.
You are free to grow your own tomatoes and you are free to generate your own electricity. You know what you are not free to do? You are not free to generate your own petrol, or drill for your own oil, or frack for your own gas. Those things depend on scarcity, access to capital and other obvious limitations that the average homeowner cannot overcome.
But solar? Solar is a simple matter of borrowing money from the bank and contracting with an installer. Neither your utility company nor your town can prevent you from securing your own energy independence. Sure, they can make the permitting process horrible and the installers can rip you off and a dozen other little things to spoil your day. Naturally, there are cloudy days, but that’s what batteries are for. You can get batteries the same way you got the panels. For now, towns make batteries harder to install, but they can’t stop you as long as you following zoning and code.
Electricity is going to be renewable, not fossil
You might not believe that solar panels and wind turbines can power the whole world, day and night, but the world disagrees with you. 100% renewable grids, running through the night on wind and solar, are already here.[13] You personally might still have a gas boiler, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world does. Entire societies are electrifying, using solar, wind and batteries, skipping fossil fuels entirely.
What was once a selling point for the fossil companies has become another bell tolling the waning days of fossil companies’ power. At annual shareholder meetings, fossil executives were exhorting the coming transition of developing economies to “bridge fuels” like gas, oil, coal and the like, as they climbed the ladder of growth. It was received wisdom that nations seeking to “develop” would naturally build gas-powered turbine generators, which would send electricity along a slow-to-build grid of wires which gradually reaches the far corners of the country.
In an interesting wrinkle, similar to the jump that developing nations took when moving to cellphones, skipping landlines entirely, developing nations have simply purchased cheap solar panels that they are using to build microgrids — self-sustaining mini energy companies generating and trading power without the national energy company ever seeing a single electron. [2] They are jumping right over the fossil infrastucture step and going straight to the future, which is no longer the future, it’s the present.
Skating to where the puck will be
As readers of this blog will know, I frequently refer to Wayne Gretzky’s famous aphorism as it perfectly encapsulates my long-standing belief that we should strive to anticipate what’s coming and work to get in position, be ready to accept the pass, and shoot to score.
Some of this is knowing which way the play is going, which implies you’re able to read the themes and trends. In today’s world, the themes and trends are not hard to see. We see induction ranges, heat pumps, domestic batteries, and EVs. If you can look into the future (and you can, it’s easy, just follow the obvious trends!) you’ll see that adoption of these Electrotech technologies is inevitable for some very simple reasons:
They are better
They are cheaper
They are cleaner
There, easy right? Considering that Electrotech solutions are cheaper, better and cleaner, it’s obvious that we’ll be heading in that direction as a world soon. In fact, most of the world is headed in that direction already, but the weight of the installed base is holding us back. Amazingly, some homes in the US still heat with fuel oil! This is incredible, but you still see fuel trucks rolling around the suburbs, filling up underground oil tanks that power oil-fired furnaces. These folks could use some help lacing up their skates and getting moving, but they’re stuck for lots of reasons, but probably mostly financial.
This is the old conundrum of the Boots theory, as advanced by Sam Vimes in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel “Men at Arms”. [14] It is cheaper to keep filling up that oil burner than to bite the bullet and install heat pumps, in the short term. What’s needed is some kind of zero-interest loan structure that lets people make the switch, allowing them access to the future. In an ideal world, this financial burden would what’s sometimes referred to as “on-bill”, which means it’s part of your electric service provided by the utility. As a small-scale generator of energy, you’ll be able to participate in local markets where buyers and sellers negotiate supply and demand.
Once we’ve removed the profit imperative, it’s a simple calculation — as energy costs rise, the price buyers pay you for your energy supply rises too. Your payoff period shortens and before long, you’re not losing sleep, in fear of winter, wondering how you’re going to pay those thousand-dollar-plus monthly bills.
We’ve veered into Utopian thinking a little here, but there are energy co-ops in places like Vermont (Green Mountain Energy) that support these ideas. Zero-interest might be stretching it, but on-bill helps a lot.
The journey of a thousand miles etc
I have long wanted solar panels on my home, adding batteries to the wish list recently. Squinting into the future, I am trying to get a little closer to the Utopian possibilities of abundant, free energy. With panels charging home batteries (and EVs), you can run your heatpump at whatever temperature you want. It might not even matter that your house is drafty because you’re just blasting that delicious warm (or cool) air around the house at whatever level you need to be comfortable. Of course, it’s better to use less, but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
While solar panels and batteries are [temporarily] out of reach for us personaly, we have made progress in several other key dimensions.
First, it was the induction plate
My Mastodon feed is energy-focused, with most of my content being about the energy transition, renewables and sustainability. In early 2024, I started to see posts about gas stoves, particularly about the problems with gas combustion in confined spaces. The upshot of these discussions was that “Natural Gas” as piped into our homes by the utility companies is bad for us. The gas [4] burners on our ranges do not fully ignite all of the gases in the utility feed, causing several toxic by-products to linger in the air in our homes. Gas ranges also leak, even when turned off. [5] This leaking problem worsens over time, as the appliances age.
I decided to buy a single burner induction plate. As with all consumer goods, price and features on these things vary. I decided a lower-end plate would be a good starting point.
To say that this thing changed my experience of cooking is an understatement. It was immediately clear that induction cooking left the air cleaner and was just … better. The plate wasn’t expensive but it came with a timer. A TIMER! Consider rice, for a moment. Bring cold water with rice in it to a boil, reduce to a simmer, cover for n minutes, where n is fifteen for white or thirty five for brown. On a gas range, it’s actually quite tricky to get a consistent flame, from one cooking session to another. There’s a certain variability in the burn, perhaps due to clogged burner vents, or to temperature and humidity in the kitchen, or perhaps even due to changes in the composition of the supply from the utility. Whatever the cause, lining up the burner dial with the same marker on different days produces different outcomes.
Because of this variability, I have to tune the gas burn every time, gently coaxing the rice to a simmer. Not so with the induction range. After some experimentation (two tests, lol) I determined that the lowest setting (“1”) with the lid slightly ajar for fifteen minutes cooked rice perfectly, reproducibly, every time. Now, I just set the timer and walk away. This was not possible with the gas range, if for no other reason than our gas range (a mid-priced appliance, definitely not the cheapest) doesn’t have a timer. Of course, induction cooktop surfaces don’t get hot because … science and magnets.
There is also a perceptible difference in the kitchen air quality. When using the convection oven for baking, there was always a certain odour — an overtone — present in the air. Similarly when using the range’s burners, there was a smell. No such smell when using the induction plate. These days, we plan our meals to be able to avoid the gas range. Soon we’ll be changing the range for an induction appliance, just as soon as those induction ranges with the batteries become affordable. NY state is making progress on that front. [6]
We use the gas appliance when we have no other choice. That’s a lot less gas being burned, and a significant improvement for us in quality of life.
Then came the heat pumps, all kinds
In our home, we recently enclosed a screened-in porch [3], making sure to install the best windows we could afford, and to insulate carefully. The main structure is heated with steam-to-radiators, which is now a gas-fired system. The air conditioner was replaced with heat pumps during the construction and now the gas system acts as a support to the heat pumps instead of as primary source for heating.
The main structure was built in 1930. It is poorly insulated, with many air leaks and cold spots. Gradually, we’ve added insulation, every season making the space just a little warmer and more efficient. The real solution would be to remove the siding and do a deep retrofit, but … money. I hope that in time, governments and societies will be able to support deep energy retrofits for older homes, but for the moment, we focus on small wins.
With heat pumps warming and cooling the space, we no longer run the gas boiler except to warm the house in the morning and possibly (although we have not seen this yet), as a supporting source in times of extreme cold or in case of electrical service outage.
Heat pump hot water heaters also work well, as do heat pump clothes dryers [7], which have the added advantage of not needing venting to the exterior, improving envelope efficiency, at the small cost of needing a condensate drain line. [8] That’s a lot less combusting of noxious pseudo-methane. Yes, that’s a lot more consumption of electricity, but for an increasingly green grid, that’s a lot less CO2. Also, we could make our own electricity, but we will never be able to make our own gas.
Then we adopted Evie
A tradition we have (and I’m sure many families do the same) is to name our cars. Evie the EV joined us with 13,000 miles on her odometer, and as with many adoptions, changed our lives.
It was with this change to our lives that we started to catch glimpses of a new-ish tomorrow. First came the strange sensation of having a car full of range every morning, or at least every morning you remembered to plug it in the night before. Sometimes we needed more range and we just plugged it in when we woke up and in a couple of hours, there was enough range to do what we needed to do. It became immediately clear that we needed a Level 2 charger. There are plenty of detailed explanations on L1 vs L2 and L3, but suffice to say that a 40A circuit and a NEMA-style outlet is all you need to get going.
We have a 100A service, as do many US households, but with judicious timing, we’ve avoided circuit breaker trips. The thermostat is turned down at night and the heat pumps work less, while the car charges. You may read that a minimum service of 200A is needed to support EV charging, but this is not true, and things are moving quickly. Surprisingly [11], electricians appear to be developing some tactical knowledge relating to L2 chargers. Specifically, our electrician recommended that we keep an eye on the breakers — if they start tripping, a service upgrade to 200A may be called for, but things have been uneventful, so far.
Real world experiences vs social media drama clickbait
The data of real world experience is so much more valuable than shrill social media claims — an old house with heat pumps supports an EV charging on a 40A service overnight. That’s it, that’s the headline. No drama, no pearl-clutchy exhortations. If you’re capable of rearranging your loads, you can easily fit everything into a 100A service. We haven’t even needed to do that, yet. Just a new 40A circuit!
We do a lot of miles. Three months with the EV and we’ve done 5,000 miles. That’s 60,000 miles a year. Compare that to the average American household’s 20,000 miles per year. Last year, those miles were fueled by gas. This year, those miles will be electric. Our Toyota Camry got about 450 miles on a 13 gallon gas tank, making 1,729 gallons of fuel we will no longer purchase, every year, forever. A similar calculus holds for our consumption of “natural gas”. Those electric appliances will never again burn a single therm of the stuff. Even our gas boiler only runs a tenth as long as it used to.
Sure, range gets worse in the cold
And the sun still doesn’t shine at night and you still have to pay your taxes. You will lose maybe 25% of your range in winter. That’s chemistry for you. Don’t worry — longer range models are coming, with faster charging. By the time you’re starting to have to plan your refuelling based on the few remaining petrol stations, EVs will routinely offer the same or better range as your gas car, even accounting for winter losses.
Join us on the road to the future. It’s easy and you can start with something simple, like an induction range, or a heat pump clothes dryer. If you’re already an all-electric home, go test drive an EV.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson
[2] The Pakistan Solar Surprise: CNN, WRI and OPB
[3] For many homeowners whose homes were originally built with empty lots all around, a screened-in porch is no longer usable space, with neigbouring properties scant yards away. In the time of Zoom and home offices, those porches are being repurposed as work spaces, which in the US, at least for now, has some tax advantages.
[4] The key quote from https://courses.ems.psu.edu/fsc432/content/natural-gas-composition-and-specifications#:~:text=Raw%20natural,as%2065%25. is this: “Raw natural gas also contains water vapor, hydrogen sulfide (H2S), carbon dioxide, nitrogen, helium, and other impurities, such as mercury […] the composition of natural gas produced in three different locations, to give an example that methane content of natural gas can be as low as 65%.”
[5] https://www.nrdc.org/bio/merrian-borgeson/gas-stoves-emit-pollution-even-when-not-use-0 . It’s worth remembering that a perfectly tuned gas range may be capable of complete combustion, but to achieve that perfection needs a trained technician with special tools. There are no studies on how long such tuning lasts, or how many ranges are performing imperfectly, and I suspect this is because such questions fall into the “don’t ask if you don’t want to know the answer” bucket.
[6] NYSERDA’s announcement of a $32 million commitment to electrify cooking appliances in NY State’s public housing
[7] Despite social media Cassandras parroting stories of widespread failure, these things work just fine. There’s a lot of fear stemming from reports of manufacturers not being able to service appliances based on heat pumps, which is not our experience. Sure, there is a cost premium, but the prices will stabilize over time and in the meantime, just enjoy the energy savings.
[8] Planning for a gravity-fed condensate line is simple, but if you find yourself stuck in a basement and wondering whether you should get a heat pump with a built-in condensate pump, don’t. Just run the condensate line into a sump pump and have that pump empty into the garden somewhere. Instead of multiple appliance condensate pumps (which will fail), you have one sump pump. Get a sump pump with an alarm and you’ll be good for a decade. Sump pumps are insanely reliable, cheap and easy to replace.
[9] A simplification, but thematically accurate. You can argue that there were [a small number of] petrol cars sold, therefore I am wrong, but pull up any meaningful data on adoption and fleet penetration and you’ll see that Norway is no longer a petrol-car country. There’s plenty to be said about how Norwegians feel about EVs (opinions are not universally positive, but they are majority positive), but you can’t argue that 30% of the entire fleet being electric (not 30% of sales — sales are already 98% EV) is not a massive shift. There are Norwegians who prefer petrol cars, but as the fleet composition shifts, those people will find that it’s not just the policy environment that makes owning petrol cars difficult, it’s the practicalities like needing a gas station. As Neo was shocked to find, a phone call is no use when you are unable to speak. Similarly, what use is a petrol car when you can’t fill it up? Sure, it will take a while before petrol stations thin out to the point of pain for drivers looking to refuel, but the trendline is brutal: https://insideevs.com/news/713296/shell-closes-1000-gas-stations-to-focus-on-ev-charging
Note that Shell’s announcement is for its global business and doesn’t name specific countries.
[10] Some sources hint that as many as one third of Norwegians would prefer a gas-powered car. However, 92% of EV owners are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their EVs, indicating that once you get an EV, you’re probably going to be happy with it. I have my doubts about these studies purporting to show that people who’ve actually had an EV ever want a gas car again. I can’t see it.
[11] I say this as a person that has wide experience with electricians. Here’s a field guide to help you identify the variety of electrician you’re working with.
[12] Electrotech: A term coined by Daan Walter and Kingsmill Bond from energy think tank Ember to describe “a transition towards a fundamentally superior energy system centered around electricity with a new generation of technologies on the supply side, wind and solar, on the demand side heat pumps and electric vehicles and other electrification technology.” (Energy Transition Show Episode #259)
[13] For now, these are unusual cases. Before we run around saying things like “renewable experts concede 24-hour supply impractical” let’s consider that these occurrences are New Records. These things had never happened before. Before they happened, the “experts” had claimed such things weren’t even possible. Then they happened. Now the experts are saying that they can’t be reproduced. You see where this is going? Originally it was “100% renewable grids are impossible”, until they weren’t. The records keep falling and x is continually redefined, where x is the thing that show that renewables can’t do the thing that fossil can do. Every time x is shown to be false, that renewables can actually do x, the fossil crowd just point to x+1, moving the goal posts. That’s fine as a strategy, until there no more iterations to point to, because renewables do all the things that fossil does.
I have written a blog post on the phenomenon of round-the-clock renewable energy, which examines examples of locations (towns, islands and nations) that have experienced their first 100% renewable day.
[14] From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory: “In the Discworld series of novels by Terry Pratchett, Sam Vimes is the captain of the City Watch of the fictional city-state of Ankh-Morpork. In the 1993 novel Men at Arms, the second novel focusing on the City Watch through Vimes' perspective, Vimes muses on how expensive it is to be poor:
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness.