Reducing carbon emissions from residential heating: A pathway forward

In the race to reduce climate-warming carbon emissions, the buildings sector is falling behind. While carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in the U.S. electric power sector dropped by 34% between 2005 and 2021, emissions in the building sector declined by only 18% in that same time period. Moreover, in extremely cold locations, burning natural gas to heat houses can make up a substantial share of the emissions portfolio. Therefore, steps to electrify buildings in general, and residential heating in particular, are essential for decarbonizing the U.S. energy system.

But that change will increase demand for electricity and decrease demand for natural gas. What will be the net impact of those two changes on carbon emissions and on the cost of decarbonizing? And how will the electric power and natural gas sectors handle the new challenges involved in their long-term planning for future operations and infrastructure investments?

A new study by MIT researchers unravels the impacts of various levels of electrification of residential space heating on the joint power and natural gas systems. A specially devised modeling framework enabled them to estimate not only the added costs and emissions for the power sector to meet the new demand, but also any changes in costs and emissions that result for the natural gas sector.

The study is published in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability.

The analyses brought some surprising outcomes. For example, they show that—under certain conditions—switching 80% of homes to heating by electricity could cut carbon emissions and at the same time significantly reduce costs over the combined natural gas and electric power sectors relative to the case in which there is only modest switching.

That outcome depends on two changes: Consumers must install high-efficiency heat pumps plus take steps to prevent heat losses from their homes, and planners in the power and the natural gas sectors must work together as they make long-term infrastructure and operations decisions.

Based on their findings, the researchers stress the need for strong state, regional, and national policies that encourage and support the steps that homeowners and industry planners can take to help decarbonize today’s building sector.

A two-part modeling approach

To analyze the impacts of electrification of residential heating on costs and emissions in the combined power and gas sectors, a team of MIT experts in building technology, power systems modeling, optimization techniques, and more developed a two-part modeling framework.

Team members included Rahman Khorramfar, a senior postdoc in MITEI and the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS); Morgan Santoni-Colvin, a former MITEI graduate research assistant, now an associate at Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc.; Saurabh Amin, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and principal investigator in LIDS; Audun Botterud, a principal research scientist in LIDS; Leslie Norford, a professor in the Department of Architecture; and Dharik Mallapragada, a former MITEI principal research scientist, now an assistant professor at New York University, who led the project.

The first model in the framework quantifies how various levels of electrification will change end-use demand for electricity and for natural gas, and the impacts of possible energy-saving measures that homeowners can take to help.

“To perform that analysis, we built a ‘bottom-up’ model—meaning that it looks at electricity and gas consumption of individual buildings and then aggregates their consumption to get an overall demand for power and for gas,” explains Khorramfar.

By assuming a wide range of building “archetypes”—that is, groupings of buildings with similar physical characteristics and properties—coupled with trends in population growth, the team could explore how demand for electricity and for natural gas would change under each of five assumed electrification pathways: “business as usual” with modest electrification, medium electrification (about 60% of homes are electrified), high electrification (about 80% of homes make the change), and medium and high electrification with “envelope improvements,” such as sealing up heat leaks and adding insulation.

The second part of the framework consists of a model that takes the demand results from the first model as inputs and “co-optimizes” the overall electricity and natural gas system to minimize annual investment and operating costs while adhering to any constraints, such as limits on emissions or on resource availability. The modeling framework thus enables the researchers to explore the impact of each electrification pathway on the infrastructure and operating costs of the two interacting sectors.

The New England case study: A challenge for electrification

As a case study, the researchers chose New England, a region where the weather is sometimes extremely cold and where burning natural gas to heat houses contributes significantly to overall emissions.

“Critics will say that electrification is never going to happen [in New England]. It’s just too expensive,” comments Santoni-Colvin. But he notes that most studies focus on the electricity sector in isolation. The new framework considers the joint operation of the two sectors and then quantifies their respective costs and emissions.

“We know that electrification will require large investments in the electricity infrastructure,” says Santoni-Colvin. “But what hasn’t been well quantified in the literature is the savings that we generate on the natural gas side by doing that—so, the system-level savings.”

Using their framework, the MIT team performed model runs aimed at an 80% reduction in building-sector emissions relative to 1990 levels—a target consistent with regional policy goals for 2050. The researchers defined parameters including details about building archetypes, the regional electric power system, existing and potential renewable generating systems, battery storage, availability of natural gas, and other key factors describing New England.

They then performed analyses assuming various scenarios with different mixes of home improvements. While most studies assume typical weather, they instead developed 20 projections of annual weather data based on historical weather patterns and adjusted for the effects of climate change through 2050. They then analyzed their five levels of electrification.

Relative to business-as-usual projections, results from the framework showed that high electrification of residential heating could more than double the demand for electricity during peak periods and increase overall electricity demand by close to 60%. Assuming that building-envelope improvements are deployed in parallel with electrification reduces the magnitude and weather sensitivity of peak loads and creates overall efficiency gains that reduce the combined demand for electricity plus natural gas for home heating by up to 30% relative to the present day.

Notably, a combination of high electrification and envelope improvements resulted in the lowest average cost for the overall electric power-natural gas system in 2050.

Lessons learned

Replacing existing natural gas-burning furnaces and boilers with heat pumps reduces overall energy consumption. Santoni-Colvin calls it “something of an intuitive result” that could be expected because heat pumps are “just that much more efficient than old, fossil fuel-burning systems. But even so, we were surprised by the gains.”

Other unexpected results include the importance of homeowners making more traditional energy efficiency improvements, such as adding insulation and sealing air leaks—steps supported by recent rebate policies. Those changes are critical to reducing costs that would otherwise be incurred for upgrading the electricity grid to accommodate the increased demand.

“You can’t just go wild dropping heat pumps into everybody’s houses if you’re not also considering other ways to reduce peak loads. So it really requires an ‘all of the above’ approach to get to the most cost-effective outcome,” says Santoni-Colvin.

Testing a range of weather outcomes also provided important insights. Demand for heating fuel is very weather-dependent, yet most studies are based on a limited set of weather data—often a “typical year.” The researchers found that electrification can lead to extended peak electric load events that can last for a few days during cold winters. Accordingly, the researchers conclude that there will be a continuing need for a “firm, dispatchable” source of electricity; that is, a power-generating system that can be relied on to produce power any time it’s needed—unlike solar and wind systems.

As examples, they modeled some possible technologies, including power plants fired by a low-carbon fuel or by natural gas equipped with carbon capture equipment. But they point out that there’s no way of knowing what types of firm generators will be available in 2050. It could be a system that’s not yet mature, or perhaps doesn’t even exist today.

In presenting their findings, the researchers note several caveats. For one thing, their analyses don’t include the estimated cost to homeowners of installing heat pumps. While that cost is widely discussed and debated, that issue is outside the scope of their current project.

In addition, the study doesn’t specify what happens to existing natural gas pipelines.

“Some homes are going to electrify and get off the gas system and not have to pay for it, leaving other homes with increasing rates because the gas system cost now has to be divided among fewer customers,” says Khorramfar. “That will inevitably raise equity questions that need to be addressed by policymakers.”

Finally, the researchers note that policies are needed to drive residential electrification. Current financial support for installation of heat pumps and steps to make homes more thermally efficient are a good start. But such incentives must be coupled with a new approach to planning energy infrastructure investments.

Traditionally, electric power planning and natural gas planning are performed separately. However, to decarbonize residential heating, the two sectors should coordinate when planning future operations and infrastructure needs. Results from the MIT analysis indicate that such cooperation could significantly reduce both emissions and costs for residential heating—a change that would yield a much-needed step toward decarbonizing the buildings sector as a whole.

This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.