Understand your household energy usages

Summary: The average Hood River County household energy spending consists of:

  • about 60% for vehicle fuels,

  • around 25% for space heating and cooling,

  • around 10% for heating hot water, and

  • around 5% for other uses.

Replacing gasoline vehicles with electric vehicles, upgrading furnaces or baseboard heat to heat pumps, and upgrading old water heaters to heat-pump water heaters cuts the average annual energy costs by more than half:

This example with the Berkeley CoolClimate calculator demonstrates a scenario to cut an average household’s emissions in half:

After electrifying this household’s vehicles and gas appliances, cutting air travel and meat consumption in half, and using 80% clean electricity, the total emissions are cut in half:

That’s enough to get started with creating a simple replacement plan.

In more depth: Housing and transportation are the largest energy usage, energy costs, and toxic and climate emissions of the average US, Oregon, or Washington household, and state-level energy inventories show the same pattern. Fossil fuel companies would like you to believe that simple actions like recycling, shutting off lights, or shifting your diet will mitigate their pollution problem; however, a much more necessary and productive approach is to focus on the transportation and built infrastructure that locks in about 60% of your daily energy usage and emissions.