Let's see, electric cars & electric heating. No more coal plants.... Where are we going to get all this juice? Some people have no brain
Go around the countryside and look at all the "Health studies before wind turbines" signs. (which is all BS, but that's another matter).
The electricity needs to come from somewhere. Select the type of powerplant for your backyard: Nuclear, coal, hydroelectric (your property gets flooded), natural gas (produced by fracking underneath your property), or wind, or solar, and the latter two will have to come with some sort of energy storage on a gargantuan scale. But I'd still rather have wind or solar than any of the alternatives.
A shift away from fossil fuels is inevitable. Might as well be prepared for it.
A lot of home heating and cooling loads can be reduced by intelligent design. This has to come via changes in the building code. Some has already been done. More is needed.
Electric heating via traditional (but cheap to install) resistance heating elements is insanity. Electric heating via heat pump with a ground-source thermal reservoir (this is what they are calling "geothermal") works VERY well and is cheaper to operate than any other heating/cooling source today BUT it's very expensive to retrofit. It makes sense to build it into the house from day one. But because it costs more compared to doing it the cheap way (resistance heating) it requires changes in the building code.
District heating as mentioned above works in Denmark because the generating station is usually right in the town. (I'm from there.) Tell that to the people who opposed the Oakville natural gas generating station and the Fiberals who went along with cancelling it for political votes. For district heating to work on a large scale, EVERY thermal generating station needs to be local to the community it serves, preferably right in the community it serves. And the network of pipes have to be built in when the infrastructure for the town is built. It's very expensive to retrofit afterwards.
In Denmark I don't think there is any place that is out of sight of wind turbines, and the bigger towns have a local power plant that generates electricity and operates the district heating system. The NIMBYs here would have a fit. The climate is pretty moderate, and most private houses don't have air conditioning (don't need it).
I am quite sure that 15 years from now, there will be EV quick-charging stations everywhere and no one will give a second thought about using an EV as their daily-driver vehicle. We are not there yet and one of the things holding me back from buying a Chevrolet Bolt as my next commuter vehicle is the absence of SAE Combo quick-charging stations with public access in Ontario. If the car becomes available (production start this Oct-Nov) and SAE Combo quick-charging stations get installed at the OnRoute service centers across Ontario before my current commuter kicks the bucket, then I'm in.
