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.
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.
Heating with Electricity? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:5, Interesting)
More seriously, New York State just signed a $20 billions contract with Hydro-Québec, the largest hydro electricity provider in North America.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]
https://www.hydroquebec.com/cl... [hydroquebec.com]
I am not saying that the move to ban natural gas is necessarily a smart one although.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So East Coast Greens love hydroelectric dams, while West Coast Greens hate dams and want them torn down with no plans to replace the power at all, at least none that I have heard of.
Re: Heating with Electricity? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's not exactly the same thing. You are talking about damning up a river to create a reservoir, which changes the location and movement of water, vs taking a little bit of water which is already going to flow over Niagara falls, divert it through some pipes, and dump it right back almost exactly where it would've been naturally and in the same volume. The only real effect is on the amount of water going over the falls, but it's doesn't really have a negative environmental impact or reduce the magnificence of the falls, and if anything it reduces natural erosion of the falls.
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Hydro Quebec has nothing to do with Niagara Falls.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/... [wikimedia.org]ébec_infrastructures-en.png
They have lots of dams.
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while West Coast Greens hate dams and want them torn down with no plans to replace the power at all, at least none that I have heard of.
You apparently haven’t driven through the huge wind farms on the east side of the Cascade mountains.
Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:5, Informative)
while West Coast Greens hate dams and want them torn down with no plans to replace the power at all, at least none that I have heard of.
You apparently haven’t driven through the huge wind farms on the east side of the Cascade mountains.
Hydro is a baseload source, available 24/7, while wind comes and goes.
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Most of Quebec's dams were built before the greens had much to say about it. Quebec has had a surplus for a long time and some dams can produce even more than they are producing currently. We are talking huge dams up North for a big part of the production. Building new ones is going to be harder due to environmental concerns.
https://www.hydroquebec.com/pr... [hydroquebec.com]
Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:5, Informative)
Huh? Here on the west coast we're building a gigantic dam for hydro, and other than it being late and over budget, it's your typical government megaproject, after all. It does have its detractors, because a traditional hydro plant isn't that green initially because you destroy a lot of land, but hey.
There are also plenty of run of river hydro as well.
The pacific northwest has an abundance of hydro resources and an abundance of hydro power - nuclear isn't even considered given how much harder it is (a hydro plant can serve as base load AND peaking plant because they can adjust within minutes).
Of course, hydro isn't cool, because it's an ancient technology that's been around over a century, compared to the trendier wind and solar. But if you have the water resources, it's silly to not build hydro. Saves having to build a nuclear plant.
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Hydro is pretty good, but the potential for hydro power is limited in most of the world (exceptions include the Pacific Northwest, Scandinavia, and Brazil). Even Egypt's Aswan High Dam only supplies a small fraction of Egypt's power, for example.
Hydro also has a potentially massive death toll due to dam collapses - on average it kills many more people than nuclear.
It also has environmental costs - swallowing up land, disrupting fish migration, and so on.
It's still much better than coal, and I suspect better
Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, hydro isn't cool, because it's an ancient technology that's been around over a century, compared to the trendier wind and solar.
For over four centuries, for industrial usage as we understand the term.
Water powered grist mills have been around since well before the Industrial Revolution got underway, and they were the inspiration for much of the early progress of the Industrial Revolution. Water wheels with mechanical power take-offs drove the early mechanical looms and other mass production machinery in the late 1700s. A water wheel was much cheaper to build and run than a stationary steam engine anywhere there was even a small river available. Rivers became so built up for power, especially in the northeastern United States, that arguments over water power led to the codifying of water rights in the fledgling nation.
Water power was very much the foundation of the modern era, alongside steam, and was far easier than steam. When it only took a halfway competent team of a mason, a carpenter, and a blacksmith to build an undershot water wheel, many did. They were everywhere in the early US and Europe. Steam engines were far harder to build, and so were much more expensive. The limited output of boilermakers at the turn of the century went to mobile applications more often than stationary, since the railroads had no choice, while the factories did.
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Hydro-Québec only uses part of its production capacity for domestic use. The remaining capacity is for sale. They are in the business of exporting electricity like the Saudis export oil. There is no large gas or coal power plants still in use there. Only a few diesel generators in very small remote communities not connected to the grid. They are 96% hydro and they have a few wind and solar farms. They can also momentarily shutdown aluminum producing plants in case of an extreme peak demand. They almo
Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:4, Informative)
Hydro-Québec is owned by the Québec provincial government.
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New York has Niagara Falls bitch!
Are you so retarded you think that Niagara Falls provides an infinite amount of energy?
Well fuck....Let's just hook the entire continent up to it.
Well, it sort of does... over time ;) It does not provide an infinite amount of power, though. The amount of energy produced just depends on how long you're willing to wait and maintain the power station.
Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Heat pumps aren't perfect (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Heat pumps aren't perfect (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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One place where I lived, -40C/-40F in winter meant you need a lot of deep dug yard.
Re: Heat pumps aren't perfect (Score:2)
New York (city) has an ocean nearby.
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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
Re:Heat pumps aren't perfect (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile though, my gas furnace gets 96%. I also use heat pumps, but it gets cold enough here that they will switch over to resistance heating and then I will switch them off and use gas.
Re:Heat pumps aren't perfect (Score:5)
Not many folks are considering that in many places, including where I am and probably NYC also, electric heat would be WAY more expensive than gas. F*cking over the city's already dwindling population of middle- and lower-income people. In winter, heating bills already are a significant chunk of their cost of living. Now, gradually, as "new construction" gradually replaces more and more of the city's existing housing stock, everyone unable to pay these outrageous bills (on top of $3-4k rent) will be priced right the hell out of the city.
Maybe that's part of the intent?
I realize that there are advantages to electric heating and heat pumps. Gas-related explosions, fires, poisonings, and other incidents are not unusual where I live, and some of these in the past have killed dozens. So it's not that I'm against conversion to electric heating. What I'm against is making it mandatory, instead of encouraging lower electric prices so that it would happen more or less naturally and voluntarily.
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If you like to cook, chances are you prefer this too...they even made an exception to this for commercial kitchens.
I refuse to live in a place that doesn't have a gas stovetop.
Re:Heat pumps aren't perfect (Score:5, Informative)
I have an induction stovetop. I much prefer it over a gas stove (having used both.) I rather not ever have a gas stove ever again.
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To each his own...and that's cool, I just don't want the government telling me I can NOT have one or the other. It should be a choice.
The induction ones, those are the kind of glass top stoves, right?
I think I'd very likely at some point break that glass top, I"m pretty tough on pots/pans on the stove top, tossing things, etc.
And I really like to use the visual feedback of seeing the flame and knowing the heat levels.
Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:5, Informative)
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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.
Re: Heating with Electricity? (Score:3)
If you go to 100 yards deep, temperature is always about 12 degree Celsius. No feezing.
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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.
Re: Heating with Electricity? (Score:5, Informative)
> 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=
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Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:4, Funny)
That sounds real cheap; digging up the ground to bury pipes in New York City.
Well, they could coordinate with the Mob. They do a lot of digging and refilling for some reason.
Re: Heating with Electricity? (Score:2)
Drilling a pipe 100 yards deep requires about 100 sq feet of ground and costs less than $5000. It's approximately enough for one household.
So, yes, it's cheap.
Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:4, Informative)
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).
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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
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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.
Re: Heating with Electricity? (Score:2)
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: Heating with Electricity? (Score:2)
Upfront installation costs are about comparable (maybe $10-15k more for a heat pump, including the drilling or digging, but that's peanuts compared to the cost of a new house).
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re: Heating with Electricity? (Score:3)
About 35% of NYC's electricity is clean nuclear power and hydro. So, still less carbon emissions than natural gas.
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Re: Heating with Electricity? (Score:2)
That's a good question, but ultimately this is about building for the next 50-100 years. So the real question is what will the mix be decades from now?
Re: Heating with Electricity? (Score:2)
It's a coast city. Could do some sserious heat pumping against ocean water.
Yes, with electricity.
Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Heating with Electricity? (Score:4, Informative)
You'd need a COP of 1.7 to break even. Modern average heat pumps achieve a COP of 1.7 at -20C. Over an entire year the COP will be significantly higher. Climate has to be much colder than it is in New York for Heat Pumps not to make sense.
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> Directly using natural has is more efficient as a heat source than burning it to turn it into electricity, and then back into heat.
Except it isn't. Because heat pumps consume a small amount of energy to move a larger amount of energy from the cold outside to the warm inside (literally pumping heat), the ratio of energy consumed to energy delivered - called Coefficient of Performance - is typically over 3:1.
The best condensing gas boilers on the market, under ideal conditions, reach about 98% thermal ef
diesel power backup is like worse then nat gas (Score:2)
diesel power backup is like worse then nat gas
Re:diesel power backup is like worse then nat gas (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
Sounds like a great idea (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: Sounds like a great idea (Score:2)
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.
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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
Re:Sounds like a great idea (Score:5, Informative)
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The electricity comes from Somewhere Else (Score:2)
This plan is to reduce New York's green house emissions. I am sure it will do that!
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. It's more efficient to burn natural gas in a power plant than in a home boiler. They have better controls and are better regulated.
No it isn't, not even close. See my post titled "Basic math".
2. It's much easier to switch a power plant source to something cleaner than it is to switch 10 million houses, this is just the start to switching the houses. Short term it might even cause more gas to be burned, but long term it'll be a benefit
This is irrelevant because there is nothing even remotely on the horizon to displace natural gas. Dreams and wishes don't produce energy.
3. This is a necessary step to get off fossil fuels. As convenient as natural gas is, we really need to slow down the use and people aren't going to agree to remove it so the easiest is just to stop adding new users
The term of art is "cart before the horse". This is an asinine policy guaranteed to produce way more carbon than necessary.
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The term of art is "cart before the horse". This is an asinine policy guaranteed to produce way more carbon than necessary.
That sounds about right. They don't know what they will replace natural gas with just yet but they are going to force the switch by not even allowing the pipes to be run.
What is maddening is the admission that carbon neutral natural gas substitutes might replace natural gas, and for those to work they need pipes to get to the consumers. No natural gas pipes and there's no way to burn the carbon neutral alternative.
My guess is this will end up with more natural gas power plants, more people trucking in fue
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Electricity...
They don't know that' what will happen, and they admit it. If they get this wrong then they could be responsible for making things worse.
Most natural gas heating systems don't work without electricity either. What are you from the 1900s or something?
Right, most, not all. It's possible to heat a building without electricity if natural gas is available. Natural gas is more reliable than electricity, or that's typical. If electricity is lost then electricity can be produced on site with generators. That's a pretty typical strategy when heat and light is important to keep running, as would be the case in most any lar
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it truly were more efficient to burn natural in a power plant than it is to use it to directly heat a home then this ban would make sense. From the numbers I have been able to find however that is definitely not the case. The best natural gas power plants are currently around 60% efficient, while the high efficiency natural gas furnaces (the kind they should be putting in new housing) are around 95% efficient. That's a pretty big difference on the face of it.
The reason that people use natural gas to heat their house is that it is cheaper. And the reason for this is pretty clear. It is simply far less efficient to turn natural gas into electricity than it is to turn it into heat.
You are definitely correct that this will make it more practical to switch away from heating with natural gas in the future. Every natural gas furnace installed makes it more difficult to switch in the long term to electric furnaces. And if New York had a plan in place to replace their existing electricity generating infrastructure with something besides Natural Gas I would agree that the plan makes some sense. It is even possible that New York is planning more hydroelecric power generation, or the construction of a new nuclear power plant. If that is the case then I applaud this plan.
If they are not building clean infrastructure, however, then this plan is basically guaranteed to burn a third more natural gas than they would if they just required new buildings to have state of the art gas furnaces (which they probably would anyhow). Which, quite possible is why Con Edison thinks it is a good idea. This plan is likely to push up both electricity and natural gas prices. Since Con Edison sells both, they get to win twice.
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The reason that people use natural gas to heat their house is that it is cheaper. And the reason for this is pretty clear.
They get to externalize their costs. If they had to pay the true price, including the cost of the emissions, it wouldn't be a cheap option.
This creates an awkward situation where people can't afford to pay the true cost, and can't afford to retrofit clean technology like heat pumps. At some point, preferably sooner rather than later, the transition has to be made. Whatever solution is proposed has to account for this, which rules out nuclear on cost grounds.
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Is this an Electric monopoly? (Score:3)
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Electric with natural gas (Score:2)
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.
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Total Idiots.
How much residential construction is there in NYC? (Score:2)
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.
morons (Score:2)
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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)
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.
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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.
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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)
Geothermal heat pumps have a conversion efficiency of around 400%. Do the basic math: 400% X 55% = 220%, which is greater than 95%.
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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
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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.
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They would have done better requiring 50 AMP 240V connection to the location of the furnace instead of removing gas as an option. That way, when in 20 years the furnaces need to be replaced, they can be replaced with an electric one.
How big is this house? A 50 amp breaker would be inadequate for resistance heat to anything but a shack, assuming this is where snow falls regularly. I'm assuming you expect to use a heat pump for heating, and that the house will already have air conditioning. A house with air conditioning before a heat pump goes in will just repurpose the air conditioning circuit for the heat pump. That's what happened when I got a heat pump. A retro-fit heat pump will almost certainly be an air source type as few peo
Idenity of RMI, why this? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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non-partisan, non-profit organization that works to transform global energy systems across the real economy.
Learn More
Re:Idenity of RMI, why this? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re: (Score:3)
Since when is / does... ?! (Score:3)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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]
Re: (Score:2)
Great question! Do some research and let us know, please?
End use bans do accomplish the goal of stopping... end... use.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re:Since when is / does... ?! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Where does NYC get its electricity from (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
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
Been there, done that (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:3)
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
What else is there in NYC? (Score:2)
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]
Yet... (Score:2)
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.
In Germany, gas is used to fight climate change (Score:3)
Sources:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/e... [wsj.com] https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
Dumbass New Yorkers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I normally don't respond to AC'S but watching you try to pick on creimer is sad. creimer spends an entire 124 bytes on his comment, meanwhile the AC's waste 2,053 bytes collectively meaning you spent almost 20x the effort and bandwidth to insult him as he put in effort to his OP comment. I consider myself a troll aficionado as I've been on /. since the early years, and let me tell you AC's you got it all backwards. If you were any good at trolling those byte counts would be reversed, I.E. you made a small