Healthy Electric Homes

SPEAK OUT FOR CLIMATE-CONSCIOUS COOLING AND HEATING IN THE 2024 COLORADO LEGISLATIVE SESSION

PSR Colorado advocates at the local and state level for a livable environment with clean air, a stable climate and clean, safe energy. Our Healthy Electric Homes (HEH) program promotes equitable adoption of high-efficiency electric appliances for cooking, heating and cooling the home and supports legislation, regulations, and other efforts that reduce consumer need to burn fossil fuels.

Watch our latest webinar, Cooking with Gas: Health Harms from Gas Stoves, held January 25, 2023. This webinar featuring PSR National’s gas stoves expert, Zach Williams and PSR Colorado coordinator, Lauren Swain, provides timely information about the dangerous air pollutants emitted by gas stoves, what they do to the human body, and what you can do to reduce your and your family's risk of exposure - as well as related state and local health and climate equity advocacy opportunities.

High-efficiency heat pumps provide heating and cooling through a single system.  Like air conditioners, they use compression and refrigerants to capture and release heat. Today’s heat pumps are highly efficient and are powerful enough to provide heat even in Colorado winters and cooling in our increasingly hot summers.

Induction cooktops allow you to cook efficiently with electricity. By utilizing an electro-magnetic impulse that travels directly into your cookware, heating your pots, not your stove, induction cooktops reduce the danger of burns and reduce the costs of electricity bills.

What are the Health Benefits?

Heat pumps and induction cooktops heat homes and cook food without the need to burn fossil fuels, typically methane gas.

Clean Air: Burning gas in homes increases indoor exposure to dangerous pollutants and vents these same pollutants to the atmosphere.

Nitrogen dioxide reduces lung function especially in children, can cause asthma, and makes respiratory diseases worse.

Particulate matter increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes, worsens respiratory disease including asthma, and has been associated with increased infant mortality, low birthweight and preterm births. In children particulates have also been associated with decreased lung growth.

Reduction in fine particulate air pollution and mortality: Extended follow-up of the Harvard Six Cities study.

Carbon monoxide – reduces the blood’s ability to carry oxygen through the body. It causes headaches, dizziness, confusion, and is fatal at high concentrations. Unintentional carbon monoxide poisonings account for approximately 400 to 500 deaths and more than 15,000 emergency department visits in the United States annually, according to the AAP Council on Environmental Health manual, Pediatric Environmental Health, 3rd Edition.

Safe Energy: No explosions or fires

The use of gas for heating and cooking can also convey another risk: gas explosions and fires. In April, 2017, a deadly explosion occurred in Firestone due to an abandoned well and pipelines under a residential development. There is still no complete mapping of pipelines in Colorado.

Colorado had at least 116 fires and explosions at oil and gas operations from 2006 to 2015, according to a study​ from researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health.