It’s hard to keep up with whatever the latest thing is in the wonderful world of alternative energy. Let’s see. Wind is a bust, solar stinks, hydrogen is going nowhere, what’s left? Oh yeah, electrification. Now that we’ve made it nearly impossible to build new power plants, let’s demand everyone plug everything into the electrical grid and draw lots more power. We’ll switch away from gasoline and natural gas for our daily needs and try to run cars, appliances and indoor heating with the electricity we don’t have. What could go wrong? In this case we don’t need models of the distant future to tell us. After a bit of arm twisting by Robert Bryce the US Energy Information Administration put out numbers that show that, as of the present, using electricity for home heating costs 3.5 times more than natural gas. And that’s before the electricity supply crisis hits.

Naturally the powers that be say they are doing it for your own good. Bryce quotes the White House saying its electrification drive would “lower energy costs”. But what does the administration’s data say? The opposite.

In 2024 the cost comparisons per million Btu (British thermal units) are as follows:

On a per-unit of heat basis the Department of Energy estimates that electricity is the most expensive way to stay warm, at $47.36 per Btu. That’s 3.5 times costlier than the cheapest option, natural gas, which comes in at $13.38 per Btu. Heating oil, propane and kerosene are in between.

Is this just a fluke? No, Bryce notes, it was like this last year too, with electricity 3.3 times the cost of gas:

In fact it’s been this way for a long time, for instance back to 2009 when electricity was three times costlier than gas:

The outlook for the future is the same. As Bryce shows, combined US and Canadian gas output is enormous, giving North American energy consumers an enormous price advantage over buyers in other regions:

Assuming, that is, that their governments don’t turn off the supplies in the irrational belief that it would somehow make their citizens better off economically, meteorologically or both.