Choose Gas over Electric when Buying a Dryer

Buying a gas dryer saves money and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

If you're in the market for a new clothes dryer and your home is equipped both for an electric and gas dryer, go with a gas one.

Although gas dryers cost about $50 more than electric dryers, the price difference is paid off in less than a year because gas tends to cost less than electricity. Gas dryers are on average about 30 cents cheaper to operate per load. They also release less than one-third the Carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by electric dryers.

If you buy a gas dryer instead of an electric one, after five years you will have saved about $450 on your utility bills, and about 4.5 tons of carbon dioxide-which is just about the same as taking your car off the road for a whole year.

If just one percent of the 35 billion loads of laundry washed each year in the U.S. was dried in a gas dryer instead of an electric one, the electricity cost savings would exceed $116 million per year-that could buy nearly 1.5 million new pairs of organic cotton jeans. Now that's hot.

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