Electrification is the process of transitioning from the use of carbon-emitting power sources like gas and coal to using clean electricity from the grid for everything from transportation to heating.
Why Electrify?
Electrification is a once-in-a-century opportunity to manage climate change and clean up the environment and the places we live. In our region, the electric power City Light delivers comes primarily from renewable sources. Our clean and carbon-neutral electricity is a springboard to reduce pollution as we collectively transition away from fossil fuel energy.
This transition allows City Light to improve how we serve our communities, especially those most harmed by pollution. Black, Indigenous and People of Color residents; immigrants; refugees; people with low incomes; youth; and English language learners – unfairly carry more health, environmental, and social burdens as a result of fossil fuel emissions.
The ongoing energy transition also helps City Light create more access to economic opportunity for our customers: growing electrification helps us keep rates affordable, support energy-efficient and money-saving electric technologies and make infrastructure investments that can create local jobs in transportation, buildings, renewable energy, and more.
How Seattle Uses Clean Electricity
From essential city services like hospitals and water treatment, to personal needs powered at home, work, school, and play, our region uses energy in a million different ways. Every time you flip on the lights, run the dryer, or commute on an electric bus, you’re using City Light’s carbon-neutral electric power. When you choose electric technologies for home and work, you help build cleaner, more secure, and more resilient communities.
Creating Our Energy Future
Seattle City Light is investing in and planning for a fully electrified future where every community we serve can access cleaner air, new job opportunities, lower transportation costs, and many other benefits that spring from our supply of carbon-free electricity.
Our Strategic Plan guides our path, including making our grid ready for increasing electricity use while investing in electric transportation and building sector programs that put the needs of people and the environment first.
