One of the biggest sources of pollution that each of us produces comes from heating and cooling our homes. The pollution from heating and cooling is even greater than what we produce from our automobiles. So the question is if you’re building a new home what fuel should you chose that’s the safest for the environment?
Obviously if we can find a way to heat our homes solely from solar power that would certainly be the best answer. Another great solution is to use geothermal heating systems. However, both of these heating systems rarely produce sufficient heating to entirely heat a home in cold climates.
So in this post I’d like to talk about fossil fuels and the impacts that they have on the environment. There are so many choices of fuels to heat your home that it’s not practical to discuss them all in this post. However, the majority of homes are heated with: Electricity, Oil, Natural Gas, Propane, Coal and Wood. So which fuel is best for the environment?
You might be tempted to say Electricity. However, electricity is a very pour choice. Most electricity in this country is generated by burning coal. Not only does the coal burning create really bad pollution but the efficiency of burning coal at a central plant to create electricity and then deliver it to your home over transmission lines is very pour. You may also be tempted to say wood because we think of trees as a clean environmental product. The fact is that most wood burning stoves are extremely inefficient and they create plenty of pollution because the combustion process is not very complete.
That leaves us with Oil, Natural Gas, Coal and Propane. Of these three oil is the least favorable choice because of the pollutants that are left over from the combustion process. Natural gas is the cleanest burning fuel option. As you can see from the table below, natural gas has the cleanest combustion products. In fact, Natural Gas and Propane boilers can be vented with PVC piping due to the rather clean and safe combustion by-products.
So for me, the obvious choice is Natural Gas. However, natural gas isn’t always available everywhere. We don’t have natural gas where I live so we use Propane for our heating, cooking and hot water. I hope you’ll consider these issues when you chose a new heating system so your new home will be as green as possible.
Todd-
I’d be curious to know what sources you used when you indicated geothermal couldn’t meet the heating loads of homes and businesses in your region — New Hampshire. I have been told that quite the opposite is true when sized properly (akin to a ‘manual j’ calculation for a traditional system) and been in at least on structure, in your state, that was quite comfortably heated w/ geothermal (a climate master system in this case).