Cost-effective planning of decarbonized power-gas infrastructure to meet the challenges of heating electrification

<h2>Summary</h2> Building heat electrification is central to economy-wide decarbonization efforts and directly affects energy infrastructure planning through increasing electricity and reducing gas demand. Here, we develop a modeling framework to quantify end-use demand for electricity and gas in the buildings sector across various electrification pathways and to evaluate their impact on co-optimized bulk power-gas infrastructure investments and operations under deep decarbonization scenarios. Applying the framework to the US New England region in 2050 across 20 weather scenarios, we find that high electrification of the residential sector can increase sectoral peak and total electricity demands by up to 56%–158% and 41%–59%, respectively, relative to business-as-usual projections. Employing demand-side measures, such as building envelope improvements under high electrification, can reduce the combined residential sector power-gas demand by 28%–30% and yield 21%–29% lower bulk power-gas system cost outcomes. Similarly, we find that demand flexibility programs can reduce the total system cost by up to 6.3%.