Dropping your gas supply and running everything on electricity is an appealing idea, partly for the carbon and partly because it deletes a line from the bill: the gas standing charge you pay every day whether you burn any gas or not. The trouble is that the easy part, saving the standing charge, is worth around a hundred pounds a year, while the hard part, replacing gas heating with something that does not cost a fortune to run, is where the decision is really made. This guide separates the two so you can see whether going all-electric adds up for your home.
The short version. Removing gas saves you the daily gas standing charge, roughly 29p a day or about 106 pounds a year at example cap rates, plus the cost of a gas safety check and boiler servicing. That is real money, but modest. The pivotal question is what replaces the boiler. Swap gas central heating for plug-in electric heaters and your running costs will usually rise sharply, because electricity costs about three and a half times as much as gas per unit. Swap it for a well-set heat pump and the sums can work. Cooking and hot water are the easy bits; heating is the whole decision.
Why people think about dropping gas at all
Three things push the idea. The first is the standing charge, that fixed daily amount you pay simply to have a live gas connection, which grates when you use hardly any gas in summer yet keep paying it. The second is carbon, since a home running on an increasingly clean electricity grid can cut its emissions by leaving gas behind. The third is simplicity and safety, one fuel instead of two, no annual gas safety check, no boiler to service or eventually replace. All three are genuine, but only the standing charge is a straightforward pound figure, and on its own it is not large enough to justify the change. The standing charges guide explains how that daily amount works and why it is there.
The standing charge is the easy win, heating is the hard part
Deleting the gas meter removes the gas standing charge cleanly. At an example cap rate of around 29p a day that is roughly 106 pounds a year, and you also drop the recurring cost of servicing a gas boiler and the annual safety check, which together might be another 100 pounds or so depending on who does them. Call the total saving somewhere near 200 pounds a year in round terms. Set against that, whatever you use to heat the home and the water now has to run on electricity, and if that heating is more expensive to run than the gas it replaced, the extra can wipe out the standing-charge saving many times over. So the honest way to judge it is to ignore the standing charge for a moment and ask a single question: can you heat the home on electricity for a running cost close to what the boiler was costing?
What actually has to be replaced
Gas usually does three jobs in a home, and each needs an electric answer before the supply can go. Heating is the boiler and radiators. Hot water is either the same boiler or a separate cylinder. Cooking is the hob and sometimes the oven. Of these, cooking and hot water are the straightforward ones. A gas hob becomes an induction or ceramic hob, which is cheap to swap and pleasant to use. Hot water can come from an immersion heater in a cylinder or a heat pump. It is the heating that decides everything, because it is by far the largest energy user in the house and the one where electricity's higher unit price bites hardest. Replace the cooking and hot water sensibly and you have barely moved the running cost; replace the heating badly and you have a much bigger bill.
The running-cost trap of direct electric heating
The tempting mistake is to pull out the boiler and heat the home with ordinary electric heaters, panel heaters, storage heaters or an electric boiler feeding the existing radiators. All of these turn electricity into heat at close to 100 per cent, which sounds efficient, but the unit price is the problem. Gas at an example 7.33p per kWh, run through a boiler at about 90 per cent efficiency, delivers heat at roughly 8p per kWh. A direct electric heater at an example 26.11p delivers the same heat at 26p per kWh, more than three times as much. A home that spent, say, 900 pounds a year heating with gas could find itself spending well over 2,000 pounds doing the identical job with resistance electric heat. Storage heaters on a cheap night tariff soften this, but not enough to close the gap for a whole house. The gas versus electric heating calculator lets you put your own figures in and see the difference for your home.
Where a heat pump changes the sum
The one electric heating technology that competes with gas is the heat pump, because it does not make heat from electricity, it moves heat from outside into the house and delivers about three to four units of warmth for every unit of power it draws. That efficiency roughly cancels electricity's higher unit price, so a well-set heat pump in a well-insulated home can heat for a cost near, or on the right tariff below, a gas boiler. This is the case where going all-electric can genuinely save money over time rather than cost more. It is not automatic: the home needs decent insulation, radiators sized for lower temperatures, and ideally a heat-pump electricity tariff to shine. The full comparison sits in heat pump running cost versus a gas boiler and the wider picture in heat pumps explained. If the answer for your home is a heat pump, dropping gas follows naturally; if it is anything else, think hard.
Cooking and hot water without gas
Away from the heating, the switch is easy and often welcome. Induction hobs heat faster than gas, waste less warmth into the kitchen, and cost only a few pence more per meal at electric rates because cooking uses little energy compared with heating, as the induction versus gas hob guide sets out. Hot water can run from an immersion heater in a well-lagged cylinder, cheaper still if heated on an off-peak tariff, or from the same heat pump that does the heating. The one thing to plan is capacity, since an immersion is slower to reheat a tank than a combi boiler is to make hot water on demand, so a household used to endless instant hot water may want a larger cylinder or a timed heating schedule. The hot water savings guide covers getting the tank set up so it is not quietly wasting money.
Capping the meter is not the same as removing it
There are two ways to stop paying for gas, and they cost and commit differently. Capping, or isolating, the supply means the gas is turned off at the meter but the connection stays in place; this is usually inexpensive and reversible, and it stops your gas use, but some suppliers may still levy a reduced charge while the meter is present, so check before assuming the standing charge vanishes entirely. Full disconnection means the meter is removed and the network operator physically disconnects the pipe, which ends the standing charge for good but can carry a one-off charge and is much harder to reverse if a future owner wants gas back. Get a clear quote for whichever route you choose, and think about resale, because some buyers prefer a home that still has a gas connection available. Do not disconnect until the electric replacements are installed and proven through a winter.
Who it makes sense for, and who should wait
Going all-electric adds up most clearly for a home that is well insulated, is fitting or has fitted a heat pump, and is on an electricity tariff that suits it. For that home, dropping gas removes a standing charge and a servicing bill it no longer needs, and the heating already runs on electricity at a sensible cost. It rarely adds up for a home that would end up heating with direct electric heaters, because the running cost climbs far faster than the standing charge falls. And it is premature for a home with a working gas boiler and poor insulation, where the right first move is insulation and draught-proofing rather than a fuel switch. If you are drawn to the idea mainly to escape the standing charge, weigh that hundred-odd pounds against the cost and running cost of everything that has to change, and in most homes still on a good gas boiler the numbers say wait.