An Electrified Future: Initial Scenarios and Future Research for U.S. Energy and Electricity Systems

As an energy source, Electricity benefits from a number of desirable characteristics: it can be transported at nearly the speed of light with transmission infrastructure, it has zero enduse emissions, it is highly flexible and controllable, it is now storable at rapidly declining costs, and it can offer improved service quality relative to conventional fuels. As such, electrification-the conversion of previously fossil-fueled end-use processes to electricity-has been identified as a key pathway to a clean, reliable, and secure energy future. Electric vehicles are the most widely cited application of electrification, but technology improvements in electrically driven devices for buildings and industrial end uses, including heat pumps for space and water heating needs, induction stoves for cooking, infrared or ultraviolet curing processes, and electric arc furnaces for process heating, could lead to more widespread electrification across these sectors.