New York State Is Set To Ban Fossil Fuels In New Construction Starting In 2026 (npr.org) 232
New York is expected to be the first state in the U.S. to phase in a ban on fossil fuel equipment in new construction. The ban is included in the $229 billion state budget deal and will likely take effect in 2026 for most new buildings under seven stories and in 2029 for larger buildings. NPR reports: New gas stoves or propane furnaces would be a thing of the past under the proposal, which would require homes and businesses to be fully electric starting in 2026. Existing buildings would be unaffected. Any new construction seven stories and under would not be permitted to install fossil fuel equipment, though large commercial or industrial buildings 100,000 square feet or more would be exempt. By 2029, the ban would apply to all new construction.
So dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What are new homeowners supposed to do when their power goes out and the only heat you can use comes from electricity?!
"Do you expect me to talk?"
"No, Mr. Bond -- I expect you to die!"
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No wonder people are moving away from that state...especially NYC.
Re: So dumb (Score:2)
Re:So dumb (Score:4, Insightful)
New York, California, Washington and Oregon are all trying to outcrazy each other. No matter who wins, their citizens lose.
Oh, make no mistake. A lot of their citizens LOVE this madness. Especially the ones that pack themselves into the cities. It is, as an earlier poster put it, their religion.
Part of the problem is that they demand this stuff without having experienced the consequences of this stuff. When that comes, it'll be too late. But likely they'll just blame it on something else anyway.
Re:So dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the problem is that they demand this stuff without having experienced the consequences of this stuff.
One of my favorite quotes related to this is:
"The quickest way to discredit liberal ideas is to implement them."
Re: So dumb (Score:2, Insightful)
>New York, California, Washington and Oregon are all trying to outcrazy each other. No matter who wins, their citizens lose.
They'll complain about crime, intrusive regulation, and transient weirdos and mental patients setting up camp on their street. Then they'll get right back to electing the very same people whose ideology/policies cause this.
It'd be like voting Republican, then complaining when it becomes illegal to involve children in your sexual fetish.
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It'd be like voting Republican, then complaining when it becomes illegal to involve children in your sexual fetish.
LOL awesome. You win the internet for today.
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Perfect comment
Re: So dumb (Score:3)
I'm not moving the goalposts. I asked for specifics in regards to policy as this is more indicative of a party stance. That we can find degenerates in either party is a given. I would certainly judge if harsher when a conservative is a moral degenerate, due to the hypocrisy. Also, where is our integrity if we are mere apologists for our own side?
Incidentally, 19 isn't a minor. Certainly Slaton should be condemned for abusing his position for sex and illegally giving alcohol to adults below the legal drinkin
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Re: So dumb (Score:2)
A large proportion of NYC housing currently uses oil for heat,
And that won't change. The law only applies to new construction, according to TFS. Likewise, existing propane and natural gas heating around the state will not be affected.
What this will do is to create a price premium for properties with less expensive fossil fuel heating sources. Many apartment buildings in NYC are one hundred years old. They are rent regulated as well. This will just be one more reason for people not to let go of their lease and buildings not be replaced.
In the outlying parts of the s
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What sort of pathetic developing world dystopia can't guarantee its electricity supply?
2023, FFS.
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What sort of pathetic developing world dystopia can't guarantee its electricity supply? 2023, FFS.
The last place I expected to see tone-deaf "it's the current year" garbage is slashdot. But here we are. Maybe, I don't know, travel. Or just google. There's not a grid in the world that doesn't have issues in extreme weather.
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The OP also specified upstate New York, which is the part away from New York City. There's a lot of territory in upstate NY.
In my northern Virginia suburb, the power company just finished replacing 50-year-old underground lines because we would lose power at least once every summer. It's been reliable since then, but was lousy when the lines were at the end of their useful life.
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The OP also specified upstate New York, which is the part away from New York City. There's a lot of territory in upstate NY.
In my northern Virginia suburb, the power company just finished replacing 50-year-old underground lines because we would lose power at least once every summer. It's been reliable since then, but was lousy when the lines were at the end of their useful life.
Yah, underground lines are not the panacea they appear to be at first. In my neighborhood, the new(er) section put in underground power because "poles are ugly, and underground is safe from disruption." Now they are stuck with ugly tilting and rusting utility posts in their front yards, and some lucky folks get a transformer box on a concrete pad.
And of course if the line is truck by lightning in the middle of a run, it's a real mess.
Re: So dumb (Score:2)
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What sort of pathetic developing world dystopia can't guarantee its electricity supply?
2023, FFS.
California says, "Hold my beer."
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Exactly, and if and when the availability becomes proportionately more critical, people will upgrade the infrastructure and tolerate the costs associated with making it them more resilient to adverse weather. (Severe weather, ironically enough, that is exacerbated by fossil fuel usage.)
Re: So dumb (Score:2, Funny)
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Forgive my generalization. But it often strikes me how the majority of these hardcore environmentalists looking to protect our futures are mostly childless nihilists who expect the government to be there forever and to have a nanny state take care of everything.
The power will never be cut from your electric heating. Your electric car will always find a free plug to recharge for your long trip. Who cares about having children? The government will provide all the care you will need.
I wouldn't call it subservi
Re:So dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
are you suggesting in a world with government collapse you would still have access to refined gasoline/diesel and utility grade natural gas but not electricity? Both of those things require huge organized apparatuses and are built on public and private industry and cooperation.
The primary reason NG is on when the power goes out is because the lines are enforced to be buried so you could solve a lot of problems by just burying more power lines.
Anecdotal but I live in hurricane country and more than a couple time I have had electricity at my home but the gas stations around me were empty.
Sorry, I can't forgive your generalization when it's dripping with bad faith, just as you wouldn't forgive mine that the hardcore anti-environmentalists are just selfish wannabe anarchists who don't care about their neighbors or communities and would happily watch the world burn to keep their pickup trucks.
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A skyscraper coated in translucent photovoltaic cells would likely be able to provide at least basic electrical needs in the event that the mains go dead. With the advances in photovoltaic efficiency and new battery tech it is entirely possible that iterative upgrades to said buildings could result in them being relatively self reliant for power needs in time. I think the trick of making it work is developing photovoltaic and battery tech that can be built using carbon emissions processed into nanotubes, gr
Burying power lines (Score:2)
Lines are above ground because it's vastly cheaper to install and maintain them. It's ever cheaper if you have to rebuild chunks of your network every year in a hurricane zone. And that isn't even the worst of it. Imagine the rats nest of trenching involved, as well as the need excavate to change things. Imagine a mature neighbourhood with enough people upgrading to EVs, and the net consumption is way over original specs.
Nope. Above grade is for the masses.
Re: So dumb (Score:2)
I think you need to look up "collapse" - I doubt the presence of large scale fuels beyond wood and coal for a while.
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Hard core environmentalists are insane zealots who would happily watch their neighbors freeze or starve to appease their climate gods.
The ecosystem is the only thing worth treating like God. It's capricious, it doesn't care about you, and if you don't respect it then it will wipe you out with extreme prejudice. Or maybe even if you do.
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Forgive my generalization. But it often strikes me how the majority of these hardcore environmentalists looking to protect our futures are mostly childless nihilists who expect the government to be there forever and to have a nanny state take care of everything.
Sorry, but how does that describe nihilism? I would think expecting the power grid to go away would better represent the concept of nihilism.
Flaky power? Weatherize, PV, Vehicle to load? (Score:5, Informative)
"Do you have any idea how big of a generator you're going to need?"
That depends on how leaky your building fabric is.
I'm not in NY, but max heat demand for our house (retrofitted 1920s brick constructions with a family of 4) is 2 kW (-5C outside, 21C inside).
I know NY gets colder, but it should also be pretty easy to get better building fabric performance for a new build (which is what we're talking about here) than I get for our 1920s house.
Let's be pessimistic and say I heat it with a heat pump which only achieves a CoP of 2.0 under those conditions. Let's also ignore incidental thermal gains (100 watts per waking human).
Total electrical power to run the heat pump would be 1 kW.
Doesn't sound like a monster gen-set to me.
Don't want to maintain a genny? I could run that (vehicle to load) from an electric car battery for 3 days. If I drop the set point temperature, reduce the ventilation rate and decide to stop heating the lowest floor, I could stretch that to over a week.
That's assuming no other significant loads, but also assuming no generation from the 4kWp solar PV I have on site (if you're not fitting PV to a new build, then that seems nuts).
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"Total electrical power to run the heat pump would be 1 kW."
Now that is nonsense. My heat pump draws 7 amps at 240 V just for the compressor. That does not include either the indoor or outdoor fans, nor the control system.
The heat pump is on a 25 amp breaker which is probably a bit oversized to start the compressor. No matter how you figure it you need more than a kilowatt to run the heat pump.
The heat pump only heats the core of the 1400 sq ft house, the bedrooms at the end are still on resistors. Adding a
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The heat pump is on a 25 amp breaker which is probably a bit oversized to start the compressor
Just FYI, your heat pump is on a 25A to meet the 80/20 rule. The highest load at the absolute maximum it should pull to meet code is 20A and it should only hit that once in the entire lifetime of the unit and likely towards the end of the lifetime.
Now that said, 80/20 applies to the person you are replying to's calculations too. 1kW is nowhere near meeting 80/20 for emergency. Generally if you have a 2 ton heat pump unit you need about 7 - 8kW generating power. Seven being if you're going to be exceptio
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-5C outside ... I know NY gets colder, but ... Let's be pessimistic and say I heat it with a heat pump...
Heat pumps become seriously inefficient at sub-freezing temperatures and during a severe winter storm -15C is pretty reasonable. Heat pumps freeze up entirely unless maintained with expensive non-freezing liquids and oils.
Heat pumps also tend to fail entirely during storms. A layer of freezing rain or a blanket of snow are fatal because they need airflow to work. When a region is getting several feet of snow during a severe storm, a heat pump is the wrong tech to have on hand.
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I'm not in NY, but max heat demand for our house (retrofitted 1920s brick constructions with a family of 4) is 2 kW (-5C outside, 21C inside).
I know NY gets colder, but it should also be pretty easy to get better building fabric performance for a new build (which is what we're talking about here) than I get for our 1920s house.
Let's be pessimistic and say I heat it with a heat pump which only achieves a CoP of 2.0 under those conditions. Let's also ignore incidental thermal gains (100 watts per waking human).
Total electrical power to run the heat pump would be 1 kW.
2kW is the equivalent to a half ton heat pump in the US which is basically a window shaker. You can't heat jack diddly squat with that let alone an ancient multi-story brick house. You'll need at least 4kW of electricity to run a low end air handler AND compressor to say nothing of surge current required to start the compressor in the first place.
Any small 110v generator can run a gas furnace.
That's assuming no other significant loads, but also assuming no generation from the 4kWp solar PV I have on site (if you're not fitting PV to a new build, then that seems nuts).
AC coupled solar does not work when there is no power. During a blackout the output from your 4kWp solar PV is gu
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350 sqm home
Built in 1907
In MN, 45 N lat so not great for solar, plus no lot/roof room for such
-40C to +40C
How do I calculate what size gen set I'd need?
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But without backup power, you wouldn't have that refrigerator run either... The whole point is they are saying they have backup power...
Generally in a blackout scenario, you have your 'critical loads'. So definitely a refrigerator. For Heating/AC, you *might* have the whole house, or if you want to be more conservative, you designate a room that will be heated/cooled, but the rest of the house may be cold. You might have one zone working at 'barely keeping the pipes liquid'. You might not do your oven,
Re:Flaky power? Weatherize, PV, Vehicle to load? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean in the depths of winter, if the power goes out, the refrigerator is the last thing I would power using backup power. There's a perfectly good cold source right outside. Need to freeze food? Put it outside. Refrigerate? Put it in the garage which is likely slightly warmer than outside.
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so when you have a generator, you DONT try to save the food in your fridge and freezer? you just give up and say, welp there goes $600 worth of food and oh all my meat for the winter. FUCK HEADS STOP ARGUING WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE TELLING YOU THEIR REAL LIFE EXPERIENCES. YOU ARE NOT SMARTER THAN THEM, THEY HAVE LIVED THROUGH THIS MANY FUCKING TIMES.
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The power supply becomes that much more critical, it changes the parameters about how important it is to remain available or how well funded and rapid downtime response is.
In addition to this, having local power storage will also be less uncommon in the future (either in a home battery or car.) And new homes heated by electricity is likely to be via exchangers so I think you're overstating the kind of power generation you need on hand in these events. (And it's an emergency, it's not like you need to heat a
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Additionally, there are a LOT of trailer parks in Upstate NY, MOST people in them are relatively low income and many of them are in rural areas.
Guess what, MOST (90%?) use propane, natural gas or oil for heat and propane or natural gas for cooking because many (most?) trailers aren't setup with a big enough electrical panel for electric heat and (even if if they did), most park electric distribution systems aren't setup to handle the electrical load of everyone running electric heat.
Part RR, lines 44-45 of
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What are new homeowners supposed to do when their power goes out and the only heat you can use comes from electricity?!
Solar panels and a whole-home backup battery seems to fit the bill easily. Why rely on "the grid" when you can produce your own electricity right at home?
It also doesn't appear that fire places would be banned (but they come with their own risks and aren't necessarily a good option for staying warm across multiple days).
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I've lived in upstate New York for 45+ years. The power goes out a lot due to above ground power lines, storms, falling trees, etc. I can still power my furnace with a small generator, and heat my home with wood too. I can also use my old gas oven and stove to cook whenever the power goes out. What are new homeowners supposed to do when their power goes out and the only heat you can use comes from electricity?! Do you have any idea how big of a generator you're going to need? Like 10kW rather than 2kW. They're banning woodstoves in new construction in NY too. Have fun freezing when the crap hits the fan and/or the power goes off. Vote out these extreme radical environmentalists. This is their religion.
How can they stop you from putting in a wood stove if you want?
Unless if they are banning propane grills and camp stoves I don't see how they can stop you from using propane for cooking. I always have a few tanks of propane.
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Should have buried some power line when you buried the gas mains.
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Yep... 10kw is about right, the size of ours when we lived on Amherst Island in eastern Ontario. Had air source heat pumps backed up by electric baseboards. No natural gas so sized the propane tank to be 3x the longest power outage the locals could recall. No, the local utility (futility?) does not make outage statistics public. This legislation is typical cart before the horse kind of a problem -- the solution maybe wonderful, but only with a reliable, fault-resilient supply. And a personal nuke is a tad o
Re: So dumb (Score:3)
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Any new build is going to be much better insulated, and will hopefully have fewer problems with pipes bursting. Using an electric vehicle as a battery, you could easily heat such a home for days using a heat pump. If the battery gets low you can drive it somewhere with power and charge it up, the same as you would go somewhere to buy gasoline if you ran low after several days.
A properly insulated home is much cheaper to heat and cool, regardless of the fuel.
Re: So dumb (Score:5, Informative)
Any new build is going to be much better insulated, and will hopefully have fewer problems with pipes bursting. Using an electric vehicle as a battery, you could easily heat such a home for days using a heat pump. If the battery gets low you can drive it somewhere with power and charge it up, the same as you would go somewhere to buy gasoline if you ran low after several days.
A properly insulated home is much cheaper to heat and cool, regardless of the fuel.
Lets look at the math here.
A 1200SF home in Upstate NY will need 60,000-66,000BTU to heat it (depending on the region, if the insulation is good AND installed properly) per the calculator at: https://learnmetrics.com/heati... [learnmetrics.com]
We will use 60k BTU as we are assuming that it was well insulated and they did a good job (ie: the builder didn't cut any corners on insulation, they used good windows, etc).
The generator calculator at: https://www.generatorjoe.net/h... [generatorjoe.net] says that a 60k BTU AC/Heatpump will need 5kW to run, or 25 amps at 240VAC single phase.
Figuring for a worse case outage in the Jan/Feb week long cold snap (single digits and wind), we will assume that the heat pump has to run 60% of the time to keep the house at a comfortable temperature (probably a little low on runtime, its not uncommon to have a furnace run almost nonstop for those cold snaps).
That would be 5kW*(24Hours*60%)=72kWH, PLUS you need to figure in enough charge to get to a charging station that has power and the amount of power used by the car to keep the battery pack warm.
So, you could probably heat a 1200SF house in Upstate NY off of an electric car if you can find someplace that has power to charge it at least once a day.
However, many houses in Upstate NY are larger than 1200SF, using Monroe County (where Rochester is), per https://www.redfin.com/county/... [redfin.com] the median home sale price was $200k and the median price was $137/SF, that works out to 1459SF, the state average is over 1700SF per: https://www.bobvila.com/slides... [bobvila.com]
Using the same sources as the 1200SF house, a 1500SF house would need a 75,000BTU heat pump (6.5kW, 93.6kWH/day) and a 1700SF house would need a 85,000BTU heat pump (7.5KW, 108kHW/day).
That also does not include the efficiency loss you get from trying to run an air source heat pump in temperatures that low.
So, could you not heat a "average" Upstate NY house in the middle of the winter with electric heat from a Tesla car battery (IIRC they have the biggest battery of any of the "readily available" EVs at 75-104kWH) unless you could charge it more than once a day.
If that much power is out, there is a good chance that it will be at least a day before the roads are passable from downed power lines and trees.
Aaron Z
Re: So dumb (Score:5, Interesting)
I converted all your numbers to metric and checked, and the only thing that seems ridiculous is the 60% run time. If your house is well insulated you should not need to dump 72kWh/day into it. Even assuming a very inefficient heat pump, that's a lot of heat.
A house of that size with proper insulation should be losing around 4.5kWh/day.
To satisfy the Passivhaus standard, the limit for a house that size would be 1.1kW maximum load for heating alone, which with a heat pump would translate to at least 2.5kW of heat or more (depending on efficiency). Average consumption over a year should be no more than 4.5kWh/day, and even in the depths of winter you should not be seeing more than 20kWh/day.
So a typical car battery should last 2-3 days, assuming you make no effort to reduce consumption. It's unusual to have the power out for that long in Western Europe, and if it happens the energy companies are typically required to provide assistance such as fossil fuel heaters or alternative accommodation. You would hope that electricity supplies in the areas of the US introducing this would be secured better too.
Re: So dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Fewer problems != no problems. Burying lines solves some but creates other problems. Outages still happen during severe storms. Those outages cause property damage and loss of life. Most of the things you mention are rare, especially in the regions discussed.
You also mention things people don't have and are unlikely to have. "Using an electric vehicle [that people don't have, especially in rural locations] as a battery, you could heat them using a heat pump [that isn't typically installed this far north]. You can drive it somewhere and charge it up [lol, it's a severe storm with multiple feet of snow], the same as you would go somewhere to buy gasoline [also lol, in these storms the community will hunker down for a week]." Heat pumps are a southern thing. They drop tremendously in efficiency when the temperature drops sub-freezing, and freeze up hard when exposed to temperatures that upstate New York and other northern states consider a moderate winter, let alone a cold winter. There are reasons these rural communities have homes with enormous pantries, families typically keep a month's supply or more of shelf-stable food in their pantry during winter months.
Redundancy is essential. Just look at Texas after their power outages and megastorm, seems like half the population bought multi-fuel electric generators (natural gas, propane, gasoline) so that when (not if) it happens next time they'll still have power. If homes become mandatory 100% reliant on electrical power you can be sure these same buildings are going to have generators added as a vital selling point.
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I'm not saying it's easy, but it is necessary and can be done. All those things can be overcome. We have over-ground cables in Europe, but we protect them better and repair them faster. When repairs can't be done quickly, we have contingencies in place like generators to loan out or fossil fuel heaters.
US homes are very poorly insulated too, even in the north.
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Heat pumps are a southern thing. They drop tremendously in efficiency when the temperature drops sub-freezing, and freeze up hard when exposed to temperatures that upstate New York and other northern states consider a moderate winter, let alone a cold winter.
Mod parent up. This "no fossil fuel heating" nonsense is religion to these progressive crazies. Go tell the Scandinavian countries they're not allowed to heat their homes in winter by burning anything anymore -- you know, how humanity has done it si
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Mod parent up. This "no fossil fuel heating" nonsense is religion to these progressive crazies. Go tell the Scandinavian countries they're not allowed to heat their homes in winter by burning anything anymore -- you know, how humanity has done it since we lived in caves -- and see what they tell you. Below 40 degrees F, all that heat pump is going to do is blow lukewarm air on you and make your electric meter spin like a top.
Damn, you should really call up the Norwegians and let them know! They've been apparently wasting their money by buying the most heatpumps per household [reasonstob...rful.world].
I don't get it. Why not legislate something common sense and achievable, like requiring super high R values for insulation, doors, and windows?
Just do both.
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The cheap hydropower helped ... until foreigners started bidding it way up.
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Heat pumps typically produce 3 to 4X the heat wattage of the electrical wattage they consume. A current, well-insulated, new construction home needs about 30-35K BTU/hr of heat. That works out to about 9 KW Reduced by 3 to 4X, by the heat pump that's 2.25 to 3 KW of electricity. The proposed newer homes might be even more energy efficient than that. As it stands though, the most expensive electricity in the nation is Hawaii, where it's 45 cents per KW/hr (although, obviously there's not that much need for h
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I don't think I'm going to make a lot of waves by coming out against burning children for energy. I'm definitely pro-renewable energy and, considering all the inputs required to grow children, I can assure you that they don't count as renewable for energy purposes.
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We get temperatures here of -20F sometimes, and often it is during these extreme cold and heavy snow events when the power goes out.
And maybe if that power was out for over a day you will have a water line freeze. New constructions are insanely well insulated. Any comparison you make to your current house is flat out wrong. Heck if you lived in a new house now any comparison you're likely to make to a new construction 10 years from now will be wrong too.
Heck you probably wouldn't even be able to heat many American homes with electricity. period. because the way we built houses years ago didn't account for a system that produces a small
Re:So dumb (Score:5, Interesting)
A future building code can't fix stupid government mandates. Many people like the atmosphere of a wood stove, that does not mean they are as ignorant as someone that assumes they are.
The trouble with wood stoves (Score:2)
This isn't as big a deal as it sounds. It's pointless virtue signally to the environmentalists. There's little or no new fossil fuel development going on outside of places like Texas where the gov't is actively encouraging it for political reasons. Wind and Solar are so much more profitable now nobody is going to build a coal or gas plant to speak of.
China will sti
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Many people like the atmosphere of a wood stove, that does not mean they are as ignorant as someone that assumes they are.
Most of them in fact are that ignorant. They are ignorant of how to correctly operate a wood stove, so they overdamp it and that produces excessive emissions. This is why most wood stoves cannot be sold in the USA any more, and so most foreign manufacturers pulled out of this market completely. If it is physically possible to close the damper more than the air intake, it's effectively illegal. (The stoves actually have to pass emissions testing.)
I live in a small town with a lot of wood heat, and most peopl
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Good insulation only goes so far, after that big snow storm that takes out power everywhere (again) for several days these new home owners will be installing a backup heat source that doesn't require gobs of electricity to function in these situations.
You mean like the one that took out gas supplies in Texas?
A future building code can't fix stupid government mandates.
If you're looking for a perfect system with 100% uptime you won't find it. Not from the government, not from the private sector, not from the left or right. The reality is your edge cases equally apply to all electric as they apply to mixed sources.
We've had this demonstrated time and time again. "How will an EV function in a crisis". The answer was obviously drive past the people queued up at the petrol station which isn't functioning due to the pow
Re: So dumb (Score:2)
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Sure, if you're trying to pretend the power isn't out and waste energy like some oblivious madman you'll need 10kW. In reality new constructions are well insulated. In the depths of winter you'll get through even some severe multi-hour long power outages without even needing to turn your heater on.
Not to mention that, if heating is the concern, you can store heat a lot more cheaply than you can store electricity. For example, your average hot water heater holds enough heat to provide around 350 Watts of it for 24 hours. Even with a well insulated house, you might need more than that, but that's just from a pressurized tank meant to keep water hot for showers and so forth. The spaces water tanks fit into can usually fit a much larger unpressurized tank (twice as tall, rectangular, probably covering mo
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Are those people using heat pumps or are they using purely resistive electric heating? Heat pumps are typically going to provide 3 to 4X the heat for the same amount of power input. In other words, based on your own example, rather than 3X as much as you, those people will be paying somewhere between the same amount and around 30% less than you. Also, I should point out that your cheap gas heating is a temporary situation. Gas used to be more expensive, but then there was a sudden price shift due to frackin
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Also, I should point out that your cheap gas heating is a temporary situation. Gas used to be more expensive, but then there was a sudden price shift due to fracking increasing the available supply. That price has been gradually going back up on average (of course it can fluctuate quite a lot) so, by the time this goes into effect in 2026, who knows what you'll be paying.
Half of New York's electrical energy comes from natural gas. Whatever the price of gas works out to be also directly impacts electrical rates.
Generally cost ratio of natural gas to equivalent electrical energy is at least 1 to 3. In environments in which heat pump COP dips much below 3 you are likely to find yourself underwater vs. a high efficiency gas furnace.
Especially in northern climates where temperatures are substantially below freezing for months at a time (certainly the case in NY) there is no mat
Feature not bug (Score:2)
See, when poor folks cannot afford to heat their homes because of an electric mandate from the government, the government will exercise more power to seize money from people who can afford to heat their homes and give it to the former (taking its cut, of course, gotta pay those government employees that will be hired to run the program, collect the taxes, etc.). This gives government more power (pun intended), which is what they wanted in the first place.
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Let’s face it – the people are just too dumb to think for themselves. There I said it. They need their leaders to figure how they should power their homes for the general good. We need more – not less - centralized federal control of the population – in this and all other aspects of life. Let’s just admit our short comings and move swiftly to a bright, advanced and equitable future in which eventually, hopefully, we can find just a small handful of the best and brightest brilliant, well educated comrades to make all of the important decisions for us This is yet another perfect example of how and why the inefficiencies of democratic self rule simply cannot compare to a centralized, benevolent governmental system.
This is why we have lots of guns
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As Ben Franklin said, (paraphrasing) any form of government is fine if it is well managed.
The implications are starting and more importantly, maintaining good management. I've long wondered how long democracy can survive in the face of modern psychology which lets any evil bastard learn the tools only a few stumbled upon in the past... with money you can simply hire unethical experts.
The biggest ironic thing in America is how they believe they are individuals but are such sheep!
Stupid lies (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of "no fossil fuels" is to not take carbon-based fuels from deep underground and throw it in the air. Blanket bans on fuel that usually comes from underground and "therefore" ending up with electric-only cuts you off from viable alternatives that aren't as flaky as an already-overwhelmed electric grid.
Forcing people to rely on the electric grid only "officially" is likely to see lots of people unofficially adding or installing random alternatives, probably badly in more than a few cases. So this is going to see an uptick in carbon monoxide poisoning deaths, illegal installation fire damage and deaths, and so on.
It's like lawmakers are small shell scripts unable to look beyond "I say BAN THIS" and refusing to even think about the possibility of adding two and two together and see what comes out. (But then, that's racist these days.)
Re: Stupid lies (Score:2)
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Having a gas distribution infrastructure sucks. They're high-maintenance and faults are extremely hazardous. It's a whole big problem that every municipality would like to avoid in the long run. Now that heat pumps exist and you can get better efficiency by burning the fuel in a power plant and sending the energy into town electrically, it's a better plan overall. It's not realistic to make it happen overnight, but it is a goal worth aiming for. And I say this as someone who hates cooking even on induction,
Re:Stupid lies (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, banning alcohol had the same effect. We showed them.
The mythology around prohibition is really interesting. I think its maintained quite cynically by the left as well to because they want to persist the idea legislating mores is a failure.
The reality of prohibition is quite different. Domestic violence and child neglect was cut nearly in half. Alcohol consumption related disease plummeted, and even after repeal it took decades before per capita consumption returned to per-prohibition levels.
Prohibition WORKED! It was effective policy, and it improved the general welfare. Its pretty bonkers to claim otherwise actually.
Did it create space for organized and petty crime. Well sure but almost any law does that. Really the problem was probably approach to enforcement more than anything.
The better arguments against the actual facts are based on individual liberties, but the left and that includes Hollywood, does not make that argument because they don't actually believe in individual liberties; they believe they should be able to suspend absolute Constitutional rights like assembly because there is a cold going around or that they should be able to dictate what fuel you cook on because their right to atmosphere is superior to yours etc.
Court already squashed elsewhere (Score:5, Informative)
Tried in Berkeley California.
A local California ordinance prohibiting natural gas hookups in new construction conflicts with federal law according to a federal appellate court.
https://reason.com/volokh/2023... [reason.com]
Re:Court already squashed elsewhere (Score:5, Informative)
Not exactly; There are critical differences:
The Berkley ordinance prohibits installing natural gas piping in new buildings. The reasoning the court used is that, because people can't install natural gas piping, it renders their gas-fired appliances useless, and therefore the ordinance runs afoul of the EPCA. I personally disagree with this because 6297(e), specifically says States/Local rules will not be preempted by the EPCA if they are more stringent... but whatever. I expect the appeals to escalate.
The New York regulation literally just says "No fossil-fuel burning equipment in new buildings." They're not regulating the energy use or efficiency of the appliances (which is the basis for court ruling), they're simply not allowing them full stop.
New York City's ban, which has been law for a few years now, takes a different approach: They banned any appliance that produces more than 25 kg of CO2 per million BTU, and it just so happens that even at ideal conditions burning natural gas emits about 54 kg per million BTU. They're not regulating the efficiency or energy use, just the emissions...
=Smidge=
so will we see a retraction? (Score:2, Insightful)
...or are we all supposed to forget about https://www.nytimes.com/2023/0... [nytimes.com] ?
"No One Is Coming for Your Gas Stove Anytime Soon" - NYT, Jan 21 2023
Re:so will we see a retraction? (Score:5, Informative)
No one forgot; the rest of us just have better reading comprehension. The article you wish to have retracted is speaking largely about retrofits to existing buildings in NYC, and the accompanying challenges. The state law is about new construction - NEW - starting in a couple of years. This means that the gas stoves that might have gone into that new construction don't even exist yet. How, then, can anyone claim they're being taken away?
No one is forcing the removal of existing stoves/furnaces/infrastructure.
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No one forgot; the rest of us just have better reading comprehension. The article you wish to have retracted is speaking largely about retrofits to existing buildings in NYC, and the accompanying challenges. The state law is about new construction - NEW - starting in a couple of years. This means that the gas stoves that might have gone into that new construction don't even exist yet. How, then, can anyone claim they're being taken away?
No one is forcing the removal of existing stoves/furnaces/infrastructure.
You're moving the goal posts here. And it's an example of why slippery slopes are real.
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No, I really don't think I am. The GP was talking about a retraction for an article entitled "No One Is Coming for Your Gas Stove Anytime Soon". Even with the passage of this law, STILL no one is coming for existing gas stoves, because the law applies to new construction starting in a few years.
I don't think it's semantically correct to claim "they're taking away the stove that I might have bought for my next house, which hasn't even been built yet!"
Re:so will we see a retraction? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, you're not supporting your argument here at all. No one is "coming" for anything, all existing gas infrastructure is fine under this.
Not a single person will lose a single thing they already own because of this.
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Yeah but the next obvious step is to ban the sale or installation of replacements to existing equipment. And then the next step will be to require people to rip out existing natural gas lines.
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it would be clear that yes
Your ability to buy a gun does not mean someone is coming and taking the gun away from you. You are asking other people to apply logic, please do so yourself. Words have specific meanings, use them correctly. No one is coming for your guns, even if you aren't able to go out and buy one.
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I recommend you take a philosophy class. Specifically logic. After you fail, maybe you'll be ready to learn about Dunning Kruger...
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Look up Slippery Slope. I don't think most people have or even know what it really is.
They are NOT "real"; they are a logical fallacy. Simply put: a start and a conclusion of an argument with an implied middle: like faith but with fraud.
It's not moving goal posts. It's phasing in a transition which indirectly will ban NEW gas stoves; which are inferior tech, unhealthy, and deeply harmful -- arguably worse than gas cars which ARE being banned in the distant future rather than wait for EVs to be perfect... w
Re: so will we see a retraction? (Score:2)
There is a sentence right in the summary(!) that states existing infrastructure is not affected.
Unless you're in an alternate universe in 2028, no one is taking the stove you have now.
Re: (Score:2)
They did not ban gas stoves. You can still have a gas stove in new construction. There just won't be any gas with which to operate it. NYT is never wrong.
As always, follow the money. (Score:2)
Fascism, thy name is New York (Score:2)
This is the economic aspect of fascism, pure and simple.
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You don't know what fascism is. I suggest you look it up in something OLDER than the internet since anything current could be influenced by today's misinformation which already has a foothold in you. You will probably stop or imagine illogical excuses since it won't likely be a pleasant experience for you. Also, you may want to look at the anti-war movement in WW2 but I don't think you'll handle that one as they had heavy ties to the Nazi and also were short sighted selfish assholes who will sound so much
Remember like two months ago (Score:2)
Remember like two months ago when this was supposedly a crazy right-wing conspiracy theory?
Really gonna replace gas boilers? (Score:2)
Propane (Score:2)
It's not that difficult to convert your gas appliances to use a propane tank rather than the utility gas line. It'll be my fall back when they try to take away my gas stove.
Really? (Score:2)
They will ban all fossil-fueled construction equipment in building new construction? Right. Only screwing you, not their buddies.
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No, they won't. Look up solar panels and wind turbines.
Also, the goal is to get to no fuel burned. We can't get there if we're burning fuel.
Re:If Only Legislators Took Physical Chemistry (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they won't. Look up solar panels and wind turbines.
Also, the goal is to get to no fuel burned. We can't get there if we're burning fuel.
Solar panels and wind turbines work in the freezing snow, with deep cloud cover?
Have you been to Northeast in the winter?
If you refuse to burn any fuel at all, where are you going to get your power when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing? Your personal fusion reactor?
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When fusion comes online, nobody's going to want or need wind/solar anyway. So. Moot point eh
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Sorry for not being clear. The point was that your post was wrong -- we won't burn more fuel.
Appliances in these new homes will run on electricity rather than burning fuel, and the electricity will eventually all come from methods of generation that don't burn fuel. This will result in less fuel being burnt, not more.
Re:If Only Legislators Took Physical Chemistry (Score:4, Insightful)
Except on some of the coldest days, the COP of a modern heat pump handily overcomes the losses from burning the fuel. You actually burn LESS fuel overall, ESPECIALLY if the alternative is fuel oil which is common in New York. And yes, even a modern condensing gas boiler getting 98% thermal efficiency** loses out to a heat pump with a COP of 3.something that's powered by a gas-fired powerplant. For comparison most gas-fired appliances are ~80% efficient because they're non-condensing.
(**Under ideal conditions, which require the whole system to be designed a low temperature hydronic)
Then pile on top of that the fact that not all electricity comes from burning fuel, and the losses associated with natural gas distribution (pipes leak y'know) and the savings become substantial real quick.
And as for stoves, the vast majority of the heat produced by an open flame burner misses the pot or pan entirely. No contest that an induction cooktop or modern electric element is more efficient.
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:2)
Are they not trying to transition electricity generation away from fossil fuels as well?
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Air travel has more utility that is not easily replaced by existing alternatives.
Air travel also releases the vast majority of those emissions in the upper atmosphere, across a large geographical area, whereas fuel burning appliances release their emissions directly into people's homes and neighborhoods where they live and is a much more local problem deserving of, and well within the jurisdiction of, local regulations.
These are not mutually exclusive either; Not banning airplanes doesn't detract from the b
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Ban everything. Then unban things only as needed.