The climate piece was very important, but
the fact that I was burning a fossil
fuel in my kitchen, and they're actually
peer-reviewed studies saying burning gas
in your stove - you will cause the air
quality in your kitchen to violate
federal health based air quality
standards in your kitchen, where you cook
and it's one of those sacred things you
do with your family, it was like this is
crazy! Turns out there are over 12
million homes and buildings in the state
of California that use gas. These
homeowners wanted to help change that. Let's take a peek inside this Oakland
California home.
My name is Juliette and my parents names are Bruce and Bonnie and my brother's name is Ian.
I'm Bonnie Cosgrove. And I'm Bruce Nilles. And this is our house. It's an all-electric emission-free house.
So where do we live? So we live in
Oakland California. We're about what two
miles from the Bay and we're about two
miles from the Redwoods, so we live in a
pretty awesome place where we can go
hang out at the beach,  we can go walking
in the Redwoods. We burn a lot of gas in
our homes, in our gas hot water heater,
gas furnace, gas stove, gas drye,r and
there's both huge health impacts and
huge climate impacts associated with
burning gas and so the renovation
project that we did over the last nine
months, was that we started with, was
getting all the gas appliances replaced
with clean, efficient electric appliances.
And we did that one first because there
are immediate health benefits of not
burning gas in your kitchen and in other parts of your house, so we're really
excited. We think it's made a noticeable
difference, and was a fascinating project
to get the gas appliances out and go
through the permitting process,  working
with contractors, and getting to a place
where we were able to shut the gas off
two months ago. But it was interesting, 
a friend of ours said try a hot plate.
Literally go buy an induction hot plate
and we have one stuck in the closet now,
and put it on this counter, 
and we tried it and it was like wow! It
is super fast, and boy it's also super
responsive, so that was sort of a gateway.
That was the thing that I think really
helped us work out that electric is actually
better and it doesn't have any pollution.
Yeah, I mean my last experience cooking
on an electric range was on my college
cooktop and it wasn't great, and so, as
someone who really enjoys cooking and I
cook most nights for the family, that was
a hard sell to get rid of gas which I
knew was responsive and it had a lot of
power. But using the hot plate was really
an eye-opening experience because it was
so responsive and so fast. And this range
is even better so I have no complaints
and am definitely a convert. So what have we done in this house? Taken all the gas
out, that's right. And what did we put up
on the roof? Solar panels! The solar panels get the power from the Sun. And
where does that power then go?
What do we do with it? We use it! For what?
For electric things that we have to charge, like phones and computers. Phones and
computers, and hot water, and the furnace, and the stove, and the car and the dryer.
Everything in our house is electric. And did we get a new car? Yes. And what's cool
about it? That I can ride in the back! It has jump seats in the back, so it's a seven-seater. And
what else is cool about it? It's all
electric. Powered by our solar panels.
The sunroof yes, that was pretty cool too.
These are steps that we've been able to
take that have that addressed some of
the more significant things that are
within our control, and so as we can take
those, you know, they're sort of baby
steps I guess, but to make the house work better and feel better and just day to
day feel like it's, you know, we're making
responsible choices where we can. Right.
Sort of working down the list, what
are the biggest footprints, what are the
biggest impacts we're having:  so there was putting on solar. Switching our car to
an all-electric, and now getting rid of
gas. Those are three the biggest
impacts in most people's lives, so
it's not everything yet. There's
obviously more we can do, but those are
three of the big ones so it's a good
place to get started and it feels good
to be doing our part
to minimize our carbon footprint. For the
folks who are saying I'm not sure I can
solve a global problem,  I think my answer
is well at least ensure the air in your
home is safe to breathe. And secondly, if
we all work together we can actually
solve global problems, that's the only thing that ever has.
What's the favorite thing
to charge with the solar panels? TV.
