Use our climate calculator to see how much you could save from electrifying your home

As more people become concerned by the heat waves, forest fires and flooding exacerbated by climate change, they’re switching their carbon-emitting home appliances for electric, emissions-free alternatives.

The impact of millions of electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps, induction stoves and heat pump water heaters can be measured not only in carbon reductions, but in significant savings, too.

The Star has partnered with Corporate Knights to analyze the co-benefits of these clean technologies, quantifying just how much Canadians in each province can save by adopting them, and what their impact will be on emissions.

The results vary widely across the country. In provinces with cheap, carbon-free electricity, the benefit of ditching fossil fuels is the greatest — both to your pocketbook and your carbon footprint. But in provinces with carbon-intensive electricity, switching off fossil fuels has a smaller impact — and can even make your emissions rise, in some cases — but the financial benefits are still there.

If everyone in Canada adopted these technologies, the impact would be enormous. It would eliminate 92 megatonnes from Canada’s national emissions annually — more than the entire oilsands sector produces. The collective yearly savings would be more than $65 billion.

While no one would say these four pieces of green technology are a panacea for solving climate change, they’re a big start. And they will save a family hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a year.

As Canadians switch away from burning fossil fuels and electrify their lives, the cumulative power of individual action is undeniable.

Methodology: Corporate Knights’ research division used a variety of publicly accessible data to calculate the cost of fuel and electricity in each province as well as the carbon emissions produced by different appliances in different regions of the country. As far as we are aware, this is the first comprehensive quantification of savings and carbon reductions from electrification of individual appliances in Canada.