A fully electrified home actually reduces overall system cost through 1- higher efficiency of electric appliances and heat pumps than their gas counterparts, and 2- a significantly reduced infrastructure cost to no longer having to maintain gas infrastructure, the totality of which (scouting, mining, transportation, last mile) is incredibly expensive. In fact, for new construction, it is often cheaper out the gate to go all electric and the efficiency savings in terms of lower electric+gas bills are significant and pure upside.

Moving on to electric retrofits, they are expensive but not crazy expensive. On the order of $2500-7500 per SFH to wire 220/30-50 amp circuits to the right places (HVAC, stove, water heater, clothes dryer, EV charger) and maybe upgrade the main panel - a far cry from redoing the entire wiring. It’s not an insane proposition to think we could retrofit all existing housing stock in a 15 year period if we wanted to take it seriously. We are going to need more electricians though.

Do you know what is actually really expensive? Billions or trillions of dollars in climate disaster losses and mitigation which we are seeing ramp up very quickly. If we continue burning fossil fuels even remotely like we are now, in 20 years time the losses we say today will look like peanuts in comparison.

Buildings make up a very significant amount of the CO2e emissions (depending on the location, often tied #1 with transportation) so doing nothing here is not really an option.