Emission impossible: the maddening, nightmare quest to decarbonize my home

Here's what happened when two climate reporters tried to ditch natural gas

This story is co-published with Grist

My wife and I live in a green, two-story colonial at the end of a cul-de-sac in Burlington, Vermont. Each spring, the front of our home is lined with lilacs, crocuses, and peonies. The backyard is thick with towering black locust trees. We occasionally spot a fox from our office windows, or toddlers from the neighborhood daycare trundling through the woods.

It's an alarmingly idyllic home, with one exception: it runs on natural gas. The boiler, which heats our house and our water, burns it. So do the stove and the dryer and even the fireplace in the living room.