by Allen Best

This was originally published in the Boulder Weekly on April 16.

Fred and Wilma (not their real names) take climate change very seriously. For the last several years, they have been members of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, an organization that advocates for a tax on greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet like most of us, they were burning natural gas to heat the space and water in their 2,800-square-foot house near Niwot. Last year, they decided to live their values. They set out to go nearly all electric.

You, too, can be like Fred and Wilma. Here’s how.

Step 1: Assess

Energy audits provide great value in guiding investment choices. They can be had for $190 after rebates.

Even more valuable are blower-door tests. Most effective in cold weather, they provide visual images of heat escaping a house. Many Boulder residents can expect to pay $60 to $150 for a conventional blower-door test. In other jurisdictions, these advanced tests typically run $200 to $450.

EnergySmart

For Boulder County residents, EnergySmart is an excellent place to start on this journey. It’s a partnership of Boulder County, Boulder and Longmont with Xcel Energy and Platte River Power Authority.

Advisors can address everything from building insulation to solar panels to the needs of electric vehicles.

Efficiency Works (Longmont Power)

An Efficiency Works assessment will cost Longmont residents $60. While funds last, assessments are free of charge for rental properties in 2025.

Xcel Energy 

The state’s largest utility provider currently offers two options for audits:

• • Home Energy Squad Plus Visit. The current cost is $100 (limited-time
    discounted rate; the cost without the discount is $150)

• • Xcel Energy Audit scheduled with Xcel registered auditor. Costs will vary based on audit type; on average, around $400, but $200 rebates are available.

Go Electric Colorado

For their deep dive into electrification, Fred and Wilma reached out to the nonprofit Go Electric Colorado. The organization provides home electrification consultations via volunteer counselors who can give insights into almost everything you need to know.

Stuart Cummings, a former pilot, and others created Go Electric Colorado with a goal of sharing their  knowledge with homeowners who wanted to figure out ways to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with their homes. Here Stuart Cummings explains heat pumps to an audience in East December. Photo/Allen Best

Go Electric Colorado coalesced in 2023 after Stuart Cummings, Julia Moravcsik and Nick Stevens met and realized how many people were interested in electric cars but remained fearful about ranges and reliability. They suspected the same was true about suppressing emissions in buildings.

Abundant information about home electrification can be found on the internet. But, as Moravcsik points out, “people kind of don’t know what they don’t know.”

“Even in Boulder, where people know a lot about this kind of stuff, most people knew nothing or next to nothing about home electrification,” she says.

Go Electric Colorado’s volunteer counselors have now provided nearly 400 consultations, about half in Boulder County, with others ranging from the eastern plains to the desert valleys of the Western Slope.

Step 2: Getting started

Insulation: Fred, who recently retired after several decades as a home remodeler, knew insulation was the most important thing in reducing energy use, no matter the fuel source. He and Wilma hired Net Zero Insulation to boost the attic insulation to R-60, the gold standard. (The R-value is the capacity of an insulating material to resist heat flow. The higher the R-value, the greater the insulating power.)

It cost $3,200, and the impact was immediate. The house stayed warmer in winter, cooler in summer — and lowered their utility bills.

Windows and doors: Many older houses have single-pane windows, which have an R-value of 1. Replacing them with double-pane windows can cost $10,000 to $20,000 depending upon the house size and number of windows. Some newer homes have triple-pane windows. Windows produced by Alpen High Performance at its Louisville factory can get up to R-11. They are also far more pricey.

The federal Energy Star program allows you to claim 30% of product cost up to a maximum of $600.

In the basement of their 1967 home, Fred installed six small double-paned windows at a cost of $2,000. Upgrading a single-paned patio door cost $3,200.

Go Electric Colorado’s Paul Bousquet counsels caution before upgrading from double to triple-pane windows. He instead advises having an energy auditor use an infrared camera to find imperfections in seals around windows.

Heat pumps: Heat pumps can replace gas-burning furnaces. Using electricity, they milk the heat from outdoor air then feed it into the building’s interior. During summer, the reverse process can replace air conditioners and swamp coolers. Heat pumps can also use the same process to produce hot water in lieu of natural gas.

Metro Denver-Boulder has several companies that specialize in heat pump installation. Xcel Energy has a list of contractors registered with the company. So does Energy Smart. Go Electric Colorado endorses a handful of contractors; Bousquet advises getting at least three bids.

Fred and Wilma used Elephant Energy for the air-source heat pump to warm and cool their house and heat their 50-gallon water heater. The $22,000 cost (after rebates) included an electrical upgrade. The Flintstone house stayed comfortable in January even when the temperature dipped to 9 below. Fred strongly advises finding a company that knows all the rebates.

(For example, Superior has a host of rebates for projects that serve up to four residential units, everything from insulation to electric induction cookstoves).

Kitchen stoves: Going electric also means replacing the kitchen gas-burning stove with an electric model. Plus, studies have shown that gas fumes while cooking the tamales can be unhealthy to cooks and others.

Boulder County offers an induction cook-top lending program for people who are curious about switching to an electric range: rebuildingbetter.org/induction-resources

While roof-top solar is abundant in this Jefferson County housing development along Highway 93 between Golden and Arvada, Go Electric Colorado counselors say it should not be the first, second or even third investment for homeowners wanting to shrink the carbon footprint of their buildings. Photo/Allen Best

Solar: Going all-electric in your house may not get you 100% clean of fossil fuels. You might achieve that by investing in solar and battery storage, a path that Go Electric Colorado can also help with.

Locally, Boulder-based Namaste Solar — an employee-owned co-op — offers free quotes. Federal tax incentives can cover up to 30% of the cost of solar panels and battery storage.

Fred and Wilma, however, decided against going with rooftop solar. Solar farms can generate electricity at scale, and roof-top solar is a long-term investment.

That has also been the advice of Go Electric Colorado. Nice, they say, but it’s not the first, second or even third priority.

Getting electricity from the utilities will include some fossil fuel. But that should diminish to near zero during the next 15 to 25 years.

Fred says that upgrading their house was a reflection of their resolve to be a part, if a small one, of the climate solution. “You can tell how much people care by what they do,” he says.