Why Stacey Abrams is working on electric stoves

Stacey Abrams is a true multitasker: She’s a voting rights activist and political leader who played a critical role in helping turn Georgia blue in the last presidential election, but also a serial entrepreneur, a nonprofit founder, and, under a pen name, a novelist. She’s a trained tax attorney and a sci-fi fan who once guest-starred on Star Trek. And in her newest role, she’ll be helping more Americans switch to heat pumps and induction stoves.

This week, Abrams became senior counsel for Rewiring America, a nonprofit with a vision to electrify everything in American homes. Electric cars and home appliances are necessary to tackle climate change, but a shift away from fossil fuels will also transform air quality and save households thousands of dollars a year on bills. “Sometimes it’s so easy to become consumed by the atmospheric—no pun intended—climate conversation,” Abrams says. “But the reality is, can you breathe when you wake up? Can you go outside and play? Can you afford to make decisions for your family?”

Abrams grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi, not far from “Cancer Alley”—an 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River, filled with petrochemical plants, refineries, and an abnormally high cancer risk for residents. So she was aware of environmental justice issues from an early age. As a college student, interning with an EPA office in North Carolina, she started thinking about the zoning decisions that affected people’s daily lives and how those decisions were made because the residents lacked access to power—and sometimes because of voter suppression. (She saw multiple examples of this beyond environmental issues; where her sister went to college, in suburban Atlanta, “when she would go into the community, it was bookstores and coffee shops, and when I went outside the gates of my college, it was gas stations and liquor stores,” says Abrams, who attended Spelman College in Atlanta. “And that was all about zoning.”)

People living near fossil fuel industry sites, from oil wells in Los Angeles to new natural gas power plants in Tennessee, have long fought for their local air quality. But a bigger shift away from fossil fuels can protect everyone. When the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed last year—with $369 billion in funding for climate action—it offered support for that shift, including new incentives and rebates to help people get electric appliances at home. (Abrams’ work to register new voters in Georgia arguably made the law possible, since Georgia voters helped give the Senate a narrow democratic majority.)

Abrams learned about Rewiring America as negotiations for the Inflation Reduction Act were underway. The nonprofit made the case for consumers: By switching to an electric car and electric appliances, the average American household can save $1,800 a year. The IRA provides more than $10,000 in incentives per household, on average, to make the switch. Some of the incentives are available now, and other rebates will roll out later through state governments. (A Rewiring America tool helps you calculate what you’re eligible for now.)

“Having grown up in a home where the power got cut off because my parents couldn’t afford it, it matters if you save $1,000 over the course of the year,” Abrams says. “And that can change a life. That’s the difference between whether a kid comes home from school and can do their homework or not.”

While some people may be skeptical about making changes—witness the recent political maelstrom over gas stoves—new alternatives like induction stoves are arguably better than their fossil counterparts. The new IRA incentives just bring them in reach of more people.

After a second failed bid to become governor of Georgia last year, Abrams thought about where she wanted to focus her time and attention and decided to work directly with Rewiring America. In her new role, she will help launch a national awareness campaign to encourage more Americans to take advantage of the new incentives to go electric. “It’s not telling you you have to get rid of what you have,” she says. “But it’s saying you can afford something new and you deserve something new if you want it. That’s the other piece of it: We get used to what we have because it’s all we think we deserve. And the IRA says you deserve to be healthy, and you deserve to upgrade, and you deserve to lower your bills.”

Abrams also plans to keep working on other projects. “My approach to my world is that I do the work necessary to make the change possible,” she says. “It’s a skill I’ve honed over many years. So I’m going to be all in to get this done. And I don’t have to not do one thing to do others.”