Wedoany.com Report-Oct 26, The newest Energy Department figures are throwing water on the Biden-Harris administration’s campaign to electrify the American home. Despite claims that transitioning home appliances from natural gas to electric will save consumers money, agency data shows electricity costs 3.5 times more than natural gas – and that’s been the case since at least 2011.

In 2022, the administration held an “electrification summit.” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm gave a speech claiming that electrification would reduce carbon emissions and lower energy costs.

The administration’s electrification campaign is backed up by anti-fossil fuel groups, such as Rewiring America. Camila Thorndike, climate engagement director for the Kamala Harris presidential campaign, worked for Rewiring America for two years before she joined the campaign. Thorndike recently became embroiled in a controversy when she attempted to clarify Harris’ position on fracking, only to make the Democratic candidate’s position seem all the more opaque.

Another anti-fossil fuel nonprofit, the Rocky Mountain Institute, produced a report in 2018 claiming that “electrification of space and water heating and air conditioning reduces the homeowner’s costs over the lifetime of the appliances when compared with performing the same functions with fossil fuels.”

The effort has a lot of wealthy people to push this upon consumers. The Rocky Mountain Institute brought in $164 million in 2022. Billionaire and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has donated $1 billion of his own money toward an aggressive movement to block consumers from accessing coal and natural gas.

The Sierra Club, which partners with Bloomberg Philanthropies for the campaign, kept a running list from 2022 to 2023 of California communities whose governments were prohibiting natural gas in new construction, starting with Berkeley, California, in July 2019. The list hasn’t been updated since April of 2023, most likely because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit killed Berkeley’s ban, which effectively called into question any such bans.

That was good news for ratepayers. According to energy watchdog Robert Bryce, under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, the DOE is required to publish annually the average costs of five residential energy sources, which includes natural gas and electricity. Bryce has reported for years that the DOE’s data consistently show electricity is more expensive than natural gas.

According to the DOE’s latest figures, residential consumers using electricity to heat their homes this year will pay about $46 per million British thermal units (btu), a measure of the heat content of energy sources. Natural gas users will spend $14 per million btus. Other fossil fuels are also cheaper – heating oil, propane and kerosene – though each costs more than double natural gas.

The natural gas industry was quick to advertise the findings.

“Today’s report by DOE underscores the important role that natural gas plays in ensuring households have access to affordable energy. Low-cost natural gas means America’s families can make the choices they need to save money on their utility bills,” American Gas Association President and CEO Karen Harbert said in a statement.

The low cost of natural gas is partly due to fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, which is a well completion technology that allows oil and gas producers to extract fossil fuels from previously inaccessible rock formations underground. The technology has allowed the U.S. to more than double the amount of natural gas it produces.

The rapid buildout of wind and solar may also be contributing to the inflation of electricity prices. Though the technologies produce cheap electricity when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, they are intermittent. Creating a reliable flow of electricity from generators that shut down, often at random, is very expensive.