Saving Money With Gas Dryers - The Environmental Impact (Part 2)
Welcome to Saving Money with Andrew!
Last week, I discussed the significant money-saving opportunities from switching from an electric to a gas dryer, or a heat pump dryer if you don’t have natural gas. This week I take on a thornier question—is this switch good for the environment?
I consider myself an environmentalist, but above all a data-driven one. My goal is to reduce my aggregate carbon footprint in a way that’s cost-effective and requires minimal work or sacrifice.
Let’s start with some premises:
Using natural gas generates carbon emissions, whether the gas is used by a power plant to generate electricity, a stove to cook food, or a gas dryer to dry clothing.
For the same amount of energy, using natural gas generates about half as much carbon dioxide as coal, and one-third less carbon dioxide than oil.
The majority of electricity in the United States is generated by natural gas (38%), or coal (23%) power plants. Excluding nuclear power (20%), renewable sources only generate 18% of US electricity, and much of this is existing hydropower plants, or wind which has its own issues with timing of generation, storage, etc. Solar generates less than 2% of US electricity. Renewables’ share of US power generation is growing, but it has been a very slow process and it will be a while (decades not years) before renewable energy’s share of US electric generation approaches that of fossil fuels.[1]
Electricity is the second-largest contributor to carbon emissions in the US (27%).
An enormous amount of the energy in fossil fuels (as much as two-thirds) is wasted at the power plant in the process of burning it to produce electricity. Check out the infographic at the end of this post for more details on the energy wasted in the chain, as well as the comparable energy usage among different types of dryers.
If you’re interested in your own state, I recommend you take a look at this (slightly dated) NYT piece. You’ll find in most states that more than half of your electricity comes from burning fossil fuels. As a result, the electricity used by your electric dryer largely comes from burning fossil fuels at some point in the supply chain.
Factoring in the energy wasted in generating your electricity, a standard electric dryer uses as much as three times as much energy as a standard gas dryer. As a result, as long as at least one-third of your state’s electricity comes from non-renewable sources (more like 16% if your state uses coal to generate a significant portion of its energy), using a gas dryer will invariably reduce the aggregate amount of carbon emissions. While your state’s energy mix will change over time, it is highly unlikely to shift in the next 5-10 years (or the next 20 for that matter) in a way that would make an electric-to-gas dryer shift a net contributor to carbon emissions.
But don’t trust me! The National Resource Defense Council, a staunch environmental advocacy group, put out an incredible study several years ago in which they put 15 different dryers through rigorous real-world testing. The study concluded that not only could a set of suggested design changes, as well as switching to natural gas dryers where available, “save consumers $3 billion per year in utility bills”, it would also save electricity equivalent to that of “more than 11 coal-fired power plants” and “eliminate more than 15 million tons of CO2 per year - the same as the annual emissions of 3 million cars.”
One of the things that bothers me most about environmentalism today is that it often focuses on exciting new technology, rather than simple and cost-effective moves. These simple moves can often accomplish far more to help the environment in the near term. Moreover, one fewer ton of carbon emissions today helps far more than one fewer ton a decade from now.
Compared to the focus on things like solar panels or Will Ferrell driving an electric car, relatively little attention is paid to the incredible benefits from doing mundane things like using LED bulbs and energy-efficient appliances. Let’s keep working toward a much greener 2040. But while we’re at it, let’s reduce 2021 carbon emissions as much as we can.
And one last note—an Australian reader rightly points out that the ultimate clothes drying energy savings indeed comes from using a simple clothesline, and that we Americans lean way too much on tumble drying. Touché! But in fairness, as we dig out from yet another half foot of snow that fell in the past couple of days, I’d gladly trade our dryers for your weather.
And now…Andrew’s pick(s) of the week:
I very much enjoyed this interview with Dana Gioia, an American business executive-turned-poet and former chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts. And this Atul Gawande New Yorker piece about the COVID response in a small North Dakota city was extremely nuanced and well done.
I hope this has been helpful. If you liked it, please share it on social media! Also, please send me your feedback, requests, and success stories.
[1] See, for example, the EIA’s 2021 energy outlook with projections to 2050.