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United States Earth

New York City Is Banning Natural Gas Hookups To Fight Climate Change (cnbc.com) 456

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The New York City Council on Wednesday voted to pass legislation banning the use of natural gas in most new construction, a move that will substantially slash climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions from the country's most populous city. The bill now goes to Mayor Bill de Blasio's desk for signature. Once signed, the measure will go into effect at the end of 2023 for some buildings under seven stories, and in 2027 for taller buildings. Hospitals, commercial kitchens and laundromats are exempt from the ban.

Under the law, construction projects submitted for approval after 2027 must use sources like electricity for stoves, space heaters and water boilers instead of gas or oil. Residents who currently have gas stoves and heaters in their homes will not be impacted unless they relocate to a new building. New York state was the sixth largest natural gas consumer in the country in 2019, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. [...] Buildings in New York City account for about 70% of its greenhouse gases. Today's ban will likely push forward a New York state requirement to obtain 70% of its electricity from renewable sources like solar, wind and water power by 2030 and achieve a net-zero emissions electric sector by 2040.
According to the think tank RMI, this bill will cut about 2.1 million tons of carbon emissions by 2040 -- equivalent to the annual emissions of 450,000 cars -- and save consumers several hundred million dollars in new gas connections. "The ban will also minimize the risk of gas explosions and reduce exposure to air pollution that poses health risks to residents, particularly low-income communities of color that are disproportionately exposed to pollution," reports CNBC.
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New York City Is Banning Natural Gas Hookups To Fight Climate Change

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  • by LordRPI ( 583454 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @11:38PM (#62085121)

    Fuggeddabout it - unless you're going to bring back Indian Point and then some, you'll spew more CO2 from the efficiency loss from Natural Gas -> Electricity -> Heat.

    • by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @11:47PM (#62085139)
      Yep - we need to build some NEW, CLEAN, and SAFE nuclear power stations. Let the NIMBY cowards freeze in the dark.
      • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @08:30AM (#62086055)

        Yep - we need to build some NEW, CLEAN, and SAFE nuclear power stations. Let the NIMBY cowards freeze in the dark.

        Think of how much carbon NYC could save if it just opened the fully completed Shoreham plant.

    • by hjf ( 703092 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @12:26AM (#62085219) Homepage

      Unless you go the Heat Pump route where you get 300% efficiency for heating.
      It's more efficient to move heat around with a heat pump, than to generate heat directly from gas.

      • by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @12:55AM (#62085297) Homepage Journal

        With a good condensing natural gas furnace or boiler, you can hit 90% efficiency. When you burn it in a power plant to get electricity, you're getting 30-50% efficiency, especially once you factor in transmission losses.

        Ergo, it's pretty much a wash, energy efficiency wise. The main point is that a natural gas furnace is a natural gas furnace; you need NG for it while electricity can be provided from many sources, including renewable. Though even the NG could theoretically be provided from green/organic sources like waste gas recovery from landfills.

        Meanwhile, you've increased complexity by quite a lot in doing this.

        Doing this even as you're shutting down green energy(nuclear power), and anticipating a drastic increase in electricity usage(EVs), is a bit short sighted.

        • by sjames ( 1099 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @01:37AM (#62085383) Homepage Journal

          Not really. A good heat pump is effectively 300-400% efficient since it just has to move the heat to where you want it. So if you lose 50% by converting to electricity and moving it through wires, the cumulative efficiency is still 150-200% vs. just burning the gas in the home at 90% efficiency.

        • by quenda ( 644621 )

          When you burn it in a power plant to get electricity, you're getting 30-50% efficiency,

          Over 50% efficiency in a modern gas-fired plant. And around here, modern split-systems get a CoP of 4-6. So a net 2-3 times the efficiency of gas heating, and it will cool in summer, from solar power. (OK, not many new-Yorkers have a roof.)
          NY get friggin' cold, so you might have to go geo-thermal, to get an efficient heat-pump for a large building.

          You also have to hope that in future, the electricity will come from greener sources. ( Why have you not built new reactors at Indian P

      • by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @01:04AM (#62085311)

        Unless you go the Heat Pump route where you get 300% efficiency for heating.
        It's more efficient to move heat around with a heat pump, than to generate heat directly from gas.

        This is an idealized marketing slogan divorced from reality. In cold climates like New York you'll spend a big chunk of Dec-Feb behind the balance point running resistive heat strips.

        • by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @01:17AM (#62085337)
          Not if you're using a buried loop ground-source heat pump -- perfectly possible with new construction since you'll be digging a foundation anyway. One or two centralized heat pumps for the entire building providing heated or chilled water to fan coil units in individual apartments.
          • by Cyberax ( 705495 )

            Not if you're using a buried loop ground-source heat pump

            It only works well if you have a watertable that actually flows. Otherwise the pipe will just freeze eventually if the heating demand is too high, limiting it to only single family houses.

            • If you go to 100 yards deep, temperature is always about 12 degree Celsius. No feezing.

              • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

                by Cyberax ( 705495 )
                How do you think this happens? Magic? If you start cooling the water it WILL freeze around your pipe. And after that the heatpump will basically revert to a regular heater. Regular conductive heat transfer from surrounding material will eventually melt it, but it'll take months.

                If the soil is permeable enough, cold water might convect fast enough be replaced with warmer water, allowing the pump to work indefinitely. This doesn't always happen.
                • by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @06:29AM (#62085855) Journal

                  > How do you think this happens?

                  Thermal conductivity and heat capacity.

                  You might not believe it, but ground temperature is remarkably stable at depth even in dry soils. The thing you're overlooking is the systems are engineered such that the mass of soil affected by the heat pump loop is sufficient to provide the designed heating/cooling capacity. We're talking hundreds or even thousands of feet of piping across dozens of boreholes to get the needed effective area.

                  Ground water is not required. In fact, if ground water is present it's common to use an open loop system that just circulates the natural ground water through a heat exchanger instead of burying pipes.
                  =Smidge=

        • by teg ( 97890 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @06:19AM (#62085833)

          Unless you go the Heat Pump route where you get 300% efficiency for heating.
          It's more efficient to move heat around with a heat pump, than to generate heat directly from gas.

          This is an idealized marketing slogan divorced from reality. In cold climates like New York you'll spend a big chunk of Dec-Feb behind the balance point running resistive heat strips.

          How cold is New York? Norway - which I think is quite a bit colder than NYC - uses a lot of heat pumps. At -7 C, you can still get a COP above 4 [smartepenger.no] (heat/electricity).

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MacMann ( 7518492 )

        Just how efficient are the heat pumps used in NYC? Ground sourced heat pumps can get a COP of 4. Water sourced heat pumps closer to 3. Air sourced have a COP closer to 2. The COP depends a lot on the temperature differential as well. I have an air sourced heat pump on my house, bought when natural gas prices were getting real high. Years later natural gas prices went down, the fancy thermostat that controlled it failed, and now it's just not economical to heat by the heat pump. I get heat from the "b

      • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Heat pumps pump heat from deep underground. That means their efficiency is directly dependent on how deep they must pump from, and whether there are too many other heat pumps in the same area, pumping the same heat out.

        New York is one of the densely populated places on the planet. You're either going to have to drill extremely deep, or there's not going to be enough heat underground but for a tiny fraction of population even in best case scenario.

        • A deep drill costs about $5k and uses (the energy of) a surface of 100 sqft. About the footprint of a single family home.

          In the summer you can cool against it, too. This gives you cheap AC, and puts heat back in.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by johngen86 ( 8411289 )

      lol, there are no power losses from electricity to heat. it's a perfect conversion. where do you think the energy is going to go?

      There are certainly losses from Natural Gas -> Electricity, and from transmission, but that's it.

    • About 35% of NYC's electricity is clean nuclear power and hydro. So, still less carbon emissions than natural gas.

      • About 35% of NYC's electricity is clean nuclear power and hydro. So, still less carbon emissions than natural gas.

        What's the marginal unit of electricity, though? Not only are hydro and nuclear not increasing, they just shut down a nuclear plant. Any increased use of electricity will come from natural gas.

    • It's a coast city. Could do some sserious heat pumping against ocean water.

      Yes, with electricity.

    • by zmooc ( 33175 ) <zmooc@zmo o c . n et> on Thursday December 16, 2021 @06:59AM (#62085915) Homepage

      Sorry, but that's utter uninformed nonsense.

      Buildings are heated with heat pumps. These have an "efficiency" (COP is the word) of at least 300%. The maximum efficiency of modern gas heating is 100%. Therefore, heating buildings with electric heat pumps powered by electricity from a gas power plant will produce significantly less CO2.

      For a modern combined cycle gas power plant that powers a modern heat pump, slashing your CO2 emissions in half is a very reasonable expectation. Also, if you live in a country with reasonable energy taxes (I don't live in such a country...), this will also be significantly cheaper in the long run.

  • diesel power backup is like worse then nat gas

    • by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @12:42AM (#62085263)

      diesel power backup is like worse then nat gas

      I got to tour some power plants while at university, as well as the mechanical systems at my high school for physics class. That doesn't make me an expert but it did educate me on how large buildings manage heating and cooling. Boilers in a large building, or a multi-building complex, are used for both heating and cooling. In more than one case there where two boilers on site. In winter they'd run one boiler, the other kept as a cold backup in case of a failure or severely cold weather. In summer both boilers were needed to run the air conditioning. A boiler failure in summer meant less cooling but this was not considered life threatening, or likely to cause harm to the building, so it was tolerated.

      Really big buildings may not be able to handle loss of heating and cooling so well. I recall local city flooding taking out electricity and leaving places with high humidity. This left the buildings unfit to occupy until expensive mold mitigation was done. That means throwing out most anything porous that was under water, opening up walls to let them air out, then all new insulation, drywall, wood furniture, etc. A lengthy power outage in NYC without backup generators would be very expensive. No natural gas backup for the boilers and electric generators then they have to bring in diesel, propane, or maybe coal.

      What is especially mind boggling is that they know hydrogen and/or synthesized methane could come soon as an alternative to natural gas. If the pipes are not in place to pipe in this carbon neutral fuel then they are stuck using electricity. Will they at least allow the pipes to be run in case of this in the future? Maybe the building becomes a laundromat or restaurant which makes them exempt from the ban, then what?

      I have to wonder about this policy of exempting certain businesses. If there is a restaurant and laundromat on the first floor of a 12 floor building do the other 11 floors get to have a natural gas boiler for heat? Or would they need to use electricity? Once those pipes are run does it make it more of a hazard for explosions, fires, or whatever if there's more people using that heat?

      I expect this policy to come back to bite them. We saw this same policy in California too, but perhaps not enough time has gone by to learn on the needed lessons.

      • I expect this policy to come back to bite them. We saw this same policy in California too, but perhaps not enough time has gone by to learn on the needed lessons.

        California isn't really cold enough to need natural gas heating, though. Air conditioning is the expensive thing here.

  • by russotto ( 537200 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @11:43PM (#62085127) Journal

    They closed the Indian Point nuclear plant. So now, Instead of using 80-95% efficient natural gas heat, they'll use ~32% efficient natural gas to electricity to run an air source heat pump with a COP of 2.5 to 3, for about the same efficiency and a lot more cost and really poor performance when it gets cold.

    • Hush now. If it feels like it's better, that's all that matters. And when the rolling blackouts and brownouts start on a cold winter night or a hot summer day, there will always be some rightwing bogeyman to blame for it.

      • by ksw_92 ( 5249207 )

        This is standard feel-good greenwash that will get delayed and discarded if it turns out that all these "renewables" don't sate the demands of the voters in their co-ops.

        The exemption for "commercial kitchens" is comical. So much new construction is high-density mixed-use construction and every restaurant is a "commercial kitchen" so pretty much every building will rate a street connection to gas if they can land such a tenant. I haven't read the proposed reg to see if, once connected, the building can offe

    • by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @12:11AM (#62085189)
      New buildings are moving to ground-source heat pumps using vertical bores for cooling water. Much more efficient and more stable at outside temps below freezing than builder-grade air-source junk. One heat pump per building providing either hot or cold water (depending on season) to fancoil units in individual apartments. This tech has been used in NYC since the 60s with boilers and rooftop chillers -- new buildings will just replace the boiler and chiller with a ground-to-water heat pump.
  • What? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jason Earl ( 1894 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @12:03AM (#62085175) Homepage Journal

    Where do these people think that their electricity comes from? According to https://www.eia.gov/state/anal... [eia.gov] 2/3 of their electricity comes from natural gas. Do these politicians really think that they are going to burn less natural gas if they burn it in power plants, transport the resulting electricity, and then use that electricity to heat houses?

    Sure, New York's renewable energy situation looks good on paper, but that is only because of the massive hydroelectric power plant near Niagra Falls. Perhaps New Yorkers will find some more rivers to dam up. Wind and solar add up to something like 5% of their energy needs. And it is madness to think that you can use either of these sources to heat a city.

    That leaves nuclear power. New York has had a pretty good story here as well, in the past. However, these days they are actively shutting reactors down. The percentage of power supplied by natural gas in New York is basically guaranteed to rise. I suspect that forcing people to heat with electricity means that New York burns more natural gas, not less.

    • This plan is to reduce New York's green house emissions. I am sure it will do that!

  • by peterofoz ( 1038508 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @12:09AM (#62085183) Homepage Journal
    Electric power demands and prices will skyrocket. Power blackouts will affect heating and cooking now as well. This is ripe for a disaster. Residents will be storing gasoline generators and gasoline.
    • They already affect heating ... most boilers won't run without electric controls. Especially the older heating-oil boilers, which require a fairly strong electric pump and blower to vaporize the oil before it's burnt.
      • Even with that, when I had an oil boiler a generic UPS was able to keep the boiler running for a few hours, where it'd be exhausted in moments(energy capacity) even if it could theoretically provide the power(watts) demanded by a heat pump, much less direct resistant heating, capable of the same amount of heating.

    • add in the fact that they just shut down one of their LARGEST sources of electricity (and most of their clean electricity).
      Total Idiots.
  • Seriously, how many new houses/apartment buildings are being built in the city? 2.1 billion tons?

    Instead, why don't they electrify the city's fleet? That'll do a whole lot more in the climate fight, and it doesn't even need legislation.

  • nat gas makes PERFECT sense for fireplaces. Later, add in methane from waste digestion, along with H2, ideally from a nuke power plant.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The article brings up that this ban on natural gas is likely to raise energy costs and will certainly reduce people's freedom on choice. I thought California residents were quite fond of maintaining people's choices? Oh, right, they can choose anything they like so long as it agrees with their "betters". I thought Californians liked to help the poor? Oh, right, they have to make you poor first so they can help you.

      California doesn't make any sense.

  • Basic math (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @12:46AM (#62085277)

    The cleanest natural gas power plants have a conversion efficiency of up to 60% not counting transmission losses (~5%).. 2/3 of New York's energy currently comes from natural gas.

    Cheap furnaces have 80% efficiency. More energy efficient furnaces with secondary exchangers and external combustion air will get you closer to 95%.

    So yes wishful thinking and getting rid of natural gas totally fights climate change.

    Baby steps I guess... at least NYC is no longer dumping their garbage in the ocean.

    • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      Or instead of electric or natural gas furnaces, they could use pellet stoves for heating, supplemented with electrically heated mattresses and toilet seats.

      If you've never sat on a heated toilet seat in a cold room, you're missing out on one of life's luxuries.

      • If you've never sat on a heated toilet seat in a cold room, you're missing out on one of life's luxuries.

        Can't recall ever seeing a heated toilet seat. I don't see the point, it's been a while since I recall a cold bathroom. I'm thinking a warm bathroom is a greater luxury.

    • Re:Basic math (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @01:38AM (#62085387)

      Geothermal heat pumps have a conversion efficiency of around 400%. Do the basic math: 400% X 55% = 220%, which is greater than 95%.

      • Geothermal heat pumps have a conversion efficiency of around 400%. Do the basic math: 400% X 55% = 220%, which is greater than 95%.

        Geothermal is not mandated by this law. The technology is expensive sometimes impractical for conditions. It costs 3x more to install on a good day. If you don't have a sufficiently sized lot or poor ground conditions costs are much higher. Builders are not going to elect to do this themselves. They are going to install resistive heating or heat pumps.

        What is amazing to me about the New York law it commissions studies to look into things like geothermal and impact on grid AFTER the law goes into effect

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        Geothermal heat pumps

        This is New York City we're talking about. Not the west end of the state where people might have a few acres on which to drill geothermal heat exchange wells. Much of the city sits atop solid granite. Good luck drilling that. And if you live in an apartment building, no way.

  • by beachdog ( 690633 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @12:49AM (#62085281) Homepage Journal

    I looked up the RMI link. This is an electric utility lobbying group. Under the banner of a California group "Peninsula Clean Energy" the same discontinue natural gas hookups ordinance was launched for Half Moon Bay and the nearby coastal communities.

    Notice, the RMI phrase "...works to transform global energy systems across the real economy."
    This group is not doing a darn thing about reducing the total tons of fossil fuel CO2. What they are doing is public utility assets and liabilities manipulation. As soon as a branch of the utility owned gas line becomes depressurized, the utility declares that string of pipe as unsafe due to water intrusion. In the accounting department, each 50 feet of abandoned gas line is an asset abandoned. So the accountants write off the dollar value of the loss in 2022 dollars, or maybe $6000 per gas meter. But the public utilities commission regulates rates, not asset values. Bingo, the Utility has got $6000 removed from the balance sheet, and the customers need more electricity than ever before. See, RMI is an advocate for "the real economy". They are saving their institutional fanny, not yours.

    RMI is a About

    RMI is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that works to transform global energy systems across the real economy.
    Learn More
      non-partisan, non-profit organization that works to transform global energy systems across the real economy.
    Learn More

    • by beachdog ( 690633 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @01:15AM (#62085335) Homepage Journal

      Another way to look at this is the energy utility company is corralling the public into a state of being consumers, consumers only. For a utility, to capture all the solar electricity made by solar panels has been going on for about 10 years. The deal is the homeowner gets "free solar installation" and the homeowner signs a electrical rate contract for some duration.

      The result is, the utility service area acquires a natural monopoly. There is no longer "free electricity" the same as there never is "free gasoline". What could you do if you had 1 kwh per day of 'co2 emission free electrical energy' to give away. The mind draws a great blank, yes?

       

    • Non-partisan, but with a 100% political mission whose goal is the subject of a deep partisan divide? Color me dubious.
  • by IHTFISP ( 859375 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @12:57AM (#62085303)

    Since when is natural gas considered a contributor to “Global Warming”?! I thought it was one of the cleanest energy sources available? Did I miss a memo?

    Also, since when does a city council have Constitutional authority to regulate interstate trade? Is NYC's natural gas coming entirely from in-state sources? I doubt it.

    I expect a massive class-action lawsuit from the natural gas consortium. And private citizens' heating costs will rise significatly, giving them legal grounds to join in for damages.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 )
      Natural gas is methane, which is in itself a potent greenhouse gas even if it isn't burnt. And gas systems are notoriously "leaky."
    • Since when is natural gas considered a contributor to “Global Warming”?! I thought it was one of the cleanest energy sources available? Did I miss a memo?

      Yes. "Clean" means very little NoX, carbon monoxide or particulates. It does not mean zero CO2, which burning gas does produce.

      Also, since when does a city council have Constitutional authority to regulate interstate trade? Is NYC's natural gas coming entirely from in-state sources? I doubt it.

      You're still free to truck in as many cylinders of out-of-state natural gas as you desire.

      But that doesn't matter. States don't need "constitutional authority" to regulate activity within their borders. For example, many states ban the sale of some varieties of landscaping plants because they become invasive weeds in the local environment. Just because you could transport those plan

    • by smap77 ( 1022907 )

      Yes, you missed the memo. Natural gas is about 25 times the GHG potential of CO2 (mass basis).

      https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissio... [epa.gov]

    • Since when is natural gas considered a contributor to âoeGlobal Warmingâ?

      Are you serious? Natural gas is pretty much just methane, CH4, as in a carbon atom with 4 hydrogen atoms attached. Burn it and it produces CO2 and H2O, just like any other hydrocarbon. The difference is that methane produces a greater ratio of water to carbon dioxide. Another notable difference is that it is difficult to liquefy, which makes it difficult to move by anything other than pipes. This difficulty to deal with makes it cheap, because if it wasn't cheap then people would just buy something eas

    • by teg ( 97890 )

      Since when is natural gas considered a contributor to “Global Warming”?! I thought it was one of the cleanest energy sources available? Did I miss a memo?

      Maybe not a memo, but you must have missed basic chemistry - natural gas, when burned, produces CO2 which is the major cause of global varming. The only exception for this is you burn pure hydrogen gas

      Clean in this context means it doesn't provide all the other pollution you get from oil and (especially) coal. It's also more efficient than coal, in that you get less CO2 per kWh produced.

    • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @08:45AM (#62086077)

      Since when is natural gas considered a contributor to “Global Warming”?! I thought it was one of the cleanest energy sources available? Did I miss a memo?

      Natural gas is just the least bad fossil source.

    • by IHTFISP ( 859375 )

      Yes, of course, natural gas is just methane, but the point is that when used as an energy / heating source, you are _burning_ it, not releasing it into the atmosphere.

      Increasing the demand for _burning_ natural gas is a good thing for the environment.

      Also, yes it is one of the cleanest forms of fossil fuels. From MTNG.com:

      When natural gas is burned properly, by-products of combustion are primarily carbon dioxide and water vapor. Because methane contains only one carbon atom, natural gas produces less carbon dioxide than any other fossil fuel, and fewer other pollutants as well.

      Only geothermal, hydroelectric, solar & nuclear power are more clean. The first three are of limited availability. Tidal turbines are not yet practical at scale. Etc.

  • According to this: https://www.eia.gov/state/anal... [eia.gov] "Natural gas, nuclear power, and hydroelectricity together have provided more than nine-tenths of New York State's utility-scale [snip] Natural gas fuels 5 of the state's 10 largest power plants by capacity, and natural gas-fired power plants account for more than two-thirds of New York's generating capacity." Idiots. All idiots.
    • You apparently don't know that heat pumps are more than 100% efficient. It takes less energy to move heat than to generate heat.

      A typical modern air-source heat pump is 300%-700% efficient. For every watt used to operate the heat pump, it moves 3-7 watts of heat. They can operate down to about -20F.
      A high-end condensing boiler or furnace is 98% efficient when operating in ideal conditions. Cheap ones are about 80% efficient.

      A modern natural gas power plant is about 60% efficient. Let's use 50% for line

  • It was in the 70's I think, when nuclear power was still seen as a good thing: lots of municipalities required electric heating in new construction (anyway, here in Europe, I expect the same was true in the US). Of course, that was resistive heating, because heat-pumps weren't yet up to the task, but still...

    Anyway, around 20 years later, electric heating was then forbidden in new construction, because nuclear was out, andn oil or gas was so much better. If you were replacing a heating system, the electri

    • It doesn't have to be renewable electricity to be beneficial.

      A top-of-the-line condensing furnace or boiler is 98% efficient. Cheap ones are 80%.

      A typical modern air-source heat pump is about 300%-700% efficient. For every watt used to power the heat pump, it moves 3-7 watts of heat.

      Modern gas turbine generators are about 60% efficient. Let's use 50% for ease of math, line losses, etc.

      So, heat pump powered entirely by electricity generated from natural gas is 150-350% efficient. Versus 98% in the absolu

  • Buildings in New York City account for about 70% of its greenhouse gases.

    There are some cars, I guess, but per-capita far less than anywhere else in the US:

    New Yorkers average about 23 cars per 100 residents compared to about 78 cars per 100 residents for the rest of the country. [nyc.gov]

  • by Chas ( 5144 )

    Is NY investing in improvements of their power grid to actually HANDLE this sort of thing?

    NO! OF COURSE NOT!

    They're going to rely on cost shifting.

    Then, when the grid fails, they'll try to force the grid providers to do it on their own dime.
    Toss a bunch of fines on top and lawsuits for people who die under this scheme. And boom!
    Watch the price for power go insane.

  • by Parker Lewis ( 999165 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @06:08AM (#62085811)
    Germany raised a lot of laws to ban coal and closed all nuclear plants (Merkel said she feared episodes like Fukushima, while Fukushima produced ZERO deaths). Now, 2021, Germany is no more capable of produce it's own energy, and they have to import gas from Russia. But Russia is not capable of attend all the European demand, the prices are hitting records and now Germany is activating their coal plants again, fearing electricity shortage.

    Sources:
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/e... [wsj.com] https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
  • by atomicalgebra ( 4566883 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @12:24PM (#62086903)
    They shutdown their largest source of clean energy, Indian Point, and replaced it entirely with natural gas. Fuck stupid antinuclear scumbags. Yes you are scumbags.

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