About half of the US uses natural gas for water heating - its substantially more efficient than burning said gas (or coal) to generate electricity, then using the electricity to heat water.
While this is true for basic resistive electric water heaters it's not for modern heat pump water heater which have energy factors of 3.5x which more then makes up for the 34% efficiency of a simple gas power plant (more modern combined cycle plants are 50-60% efficient) and the 95% efficiency of the grid.
Still works out much cheaper to use gas than electricity for heating in California with gas at $0.06/kWh vs $0.26/kWh for electricity.
Not to mention that piping all that natural gas out to each home has to result in a certain amount of leakage and energy cost in just the pumping itself.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3#:~:text=Th....
Figure on the order of 60% efficient for the best natural gas power plants vs. 95% efficient for a condensing gas water heater. Not to mention the drastic reduction in expensive electrical infrastructure, the power plant, etc.
I wonder how from a pure greenhouse gasses perspective, the numbers stack up. I know that leaked methane is much worse than CO2. 28x according to [1]
This source [2] says that the grid looses: 2% - 5% of gas between provider and consumer.
Even assuming that your grid is 90% just gas plants stil.
30% loss at the power plant, 5% loss from electrical grid. So for every unit of water heated you are wasting 35% of the energy.
Vs say 2% loss in the natural gas grid. but that 2% is 28x worse than burned CO2.
Am I completely wrong in saying that from a pure this hurts the planet more electric based water heaters often probably still win?
[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warmin... [2] https://pubs.naruc.org/pub/FA86BB52-AE3F-D8AC-B295-801BD6DC6...
Assuming your electricity comes from gas plants.
The grid is getting greener which means you win by even more if you electrify everything.
If you have a gas line to your home the most efficient way of heating would be to have co-generation gas turbine than makes heat and electricity and then use the electricity produced to power heat pump.