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Officials in Southern California are just now starting to issue rebuilding permits more than three months after wildfires destroyed or damaged more than 18,000 homes and other buildings. Climate activists hope to persuade people to go all-electric instead of using climate-warming natural gas. Now, that's in line with California's goals to reduce greenhouse gases. But NPR's Jeff Brady reports not everyone is ready to make that change.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEEPING)
JEFF BRADY, BYLINE: In Altadena, California, these sounds are everywhere. Heavy equipment clears debris from the Eaton and Palisades wildfires, leaving a dirt lot for rebuilding.
JAIME RODRIGUEZ: We're on Glenrose Avenue. Sorry, there's a street sweeper going by.
BRADY: As the cleanup transitions to rebuilding, Jaime Rodriguez (ph) is in front of his burned home, looking where the garage used to be.
RODRIGUEZ: I had a classic BMW M Roadster in there. Unfortunately, I could only take one of the cars with me.
BRADY: With the burned car hauled away, Rodriguez says he plans to rebuild a more climate-friendly, all-electric home.
RODRIGUEZ: No, there will be no gas in the next one. The only thing I had for gas in this house was just for the water heater.
BRADY: Rodriguez started transitioning his home to electric before the fire. He replaced a gas furnace with a more efficient electric heat pump, and now he'll cut off gas service to his rebuilt home. That was an easy decision for him. But for people who haven't thought about switching to electric appliances, it's more difficult. A mile down the hill, past the burned elementary school, Lupe Sanchez's (ph) home was damaged but is still standing. She says switching to all-electric never occurred to her.
LUPE SANCHEZ: No, I haven't heard anything about that at all.
BRADY: OK. Is gas service important to you?
SANCHEZ: Well, yeah. That's how I cook. That's how I had my dryer running, you know, on gas.
BRADY: Natural gas is mostly methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas. California buildings make up about a quarter of the state's climate pollution, much of that from burning gas. That's why the state has a plan to transition from gas to electric in buildings and zero out the state's climate pollution by 2045.
JOSH LAPPEN: This has been viewed largely as a problem for the future.
BRADY: Josh Lappen is a researcher at the University of Notre Dame who studies the expansion and contraction of energy systems such as gas utilities. He says across the country, these networks of pipes and equipment will have to shrink in coming decades to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals.
LAPPEN: What a neighborhood-scale disaster like these fires has done is bring this potential crisis forward into the 2020s.
BRADY: And right now regulators and policymakers are reluctant to force people who just lost their homes to also give up the personal choice to have gas in their new home. So for now, that's a choice being made house by house.
BECKIE MENTEN: As much as I would love to see an all-electric future, I do think that's probably the right approach.
BRADY: Beckie Menten is the California director at the Building Decarbonization Coalition. To convince homeowners to rebuild with electric appliances, her group is providing information and technical help. One of the more compelling arguments is that electrification can save money.
MENTEN: Overall, we estimate that you can save somewhere between 7- to $10,000 by building an all-electric home as opposed to a dual-fuel home.
BRADY: In part because there's no need to install gas pipes in the new home. That saves on construction costs. The local gas utility SoCalGas says it already has restored service to about half of the 30,000 customers affected by the Eaton and Palisades fires. Climate groups are talking now with people who lost their homes so they understand early in the rebuilding process that they can choose all-electric.
Jeff Brady, NPR News, Altadena.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARISA ANDERSON'S "THE FIRE THIS TIME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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