Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 1001 posts

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#231

Post by abigail95 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #181
jillesvangurp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat pumps are about 250-300% efficient. Relative to resistive heating which is of course 100% efficient. Gas is about close to 100% (you loose some via exhaust). Ground source heat pumps work pretty much anywhere. Air source heat pumps can be more challenging but can also work at more extreme temperatures. They don't stop working but their efficiency drops a bit. And of course resistive heating doesn't stop working.…

> Heat pumps are about 250-300% efficient. Sure. When we’re talking about the temperature band they work in. Once it hits 0C the efficiency is very low, and by -10C is almost doing nothing at all. At that point you have two things happening… 1. You are using electricity to warm your coils outside to keep frost and snow off them. 2. You are using drastically inefficient heat for your home. 200-300% in their band under…

What heat pump model are you using for your numbers so I can confirm its specs?

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#232

Post by seizethecheese »

lizardking wrote: post #151
bsder wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Every day hacker news continues its slow slide into redditdom.

The parent and the reply are now heavily downvoted. It pays to call this stuff out (without stooping to the same level.

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#233

Post by jillesvangurp »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #181
jillesvangurp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat pumps are about 250-300% efficient. Relative to resistive heating which is of course 100% efficient. Gas is about close to 100% (you loose some via exhaust). Ground source heat pumps work pretty much anywhere. Air source heat pumps can be more challenging but can also work at more extreme temperatures. They don't stop working but their efficiency drops a bit. And of course resistive heating doesn't stop working.…

> Heat pumps are about 250-300% efficient. Sure. When we’re talking about the temperature band they work in. Once it hits 0C the efficiency is very low, and by -10C is almost doing nothing at all. At that point you have two things happening… 1. You are using electricity to warm your coils outside to keep frost and snow off them. 2. You are using drastically inefficient heat for your home. 200-300% in their band under…

I'm not cherry picking, I'm merely describing the status quo in a place of the world that can be pretty extreme compared to NY.

You are talking about air source heat pumps. There are actually variants of that technology that work fine at -20 and below. -20 is actually quite far above absolute zero. The challenge is not that there isn't enough energy but finding and pumping liquids around that can absorb that "heat" and actually stay liquid. Efficiency indeed drops below zero. But it still works.

However, ground source heat pumps are not dependent on the air temperature at all and work anywhere you can get a decent temperature gradient from the ground. Which is pretty much anywhere except maybe on top of the arctic ice sheet in e.g. Antarctica.. Stick a few pipes in the ground and get them deep enough and you can have an nice cozy house pretty much anywhere that is not located on a few miles of ice. NY is perfect for that. No permafrost there and stable temperatures below ground throughout the year.

And again, they have been doing this for decades in places like Finland, Sweden, Norway, Greenland, etc. That's because this stuff works and is reliable and efficient enough. This is not some new kind of science fiction technology. Millions of households depend on this when it gets to minus 40C and below (about the same in C and F). And having lived in Sweden and Finland, I can tell you that they like their houses heated properly there and it really gets that cold up north. They don't use gas in houses there at all and never have. There are no gas distribution networks there. Oil based heating has been phased out in most places there a long time ago. But people forget that that stuff has to be trucked in and trucking anything in gets tricky when there's a few meters of snow on the roads. Heatpumps, resistive heating, district heating, and wood based stoves is pretty much all they use there. District heating is not common outside the more populated areas (i.e. most of the Arctic region) with the exception of the larger towns and villages.

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#234

Post by 8note »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #195
topaz0 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of the reason for banning gas is not energy but indoor pollution. There's pretty strong and growing evidence that cooking with gas leads to substantial health risks because of various combustion products that end up in your air (especially if not properly vented).

The total effect on health seems rather debatable, and even if so there are better solutions (e.g. minimum ventilation requirements) for that. Total bans on products people use and can enjoy responsibility due to potential health risks is nearly always a bad idea in my opinion. Just look at smoking in the US, for example, which recently hit an all time low. We could have gone the prohibition route (and we can guess h…

This is not a total ban though?

They aren't going to force the gas to be removed from current kitchens and heaters any time soon.

There is a prohibition on smoking, kids aren't allowed to buy cigarettes

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#235

Post by tialaramex »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #166

I don't often like to take a "both sides" approach when assessing specific issues, but this one just seems to highlight the stupidity, or at the very least shortsightedness, of both sides. On one hand, for those pushing for a ban, this seems largely performative, a la banning plastic straws. Gas is used for 2 main reasons: for cooking, where it represents a miniscule amount of overall energy use, and for heating, whe…

One reason to specifically forbid new installations is to avoid stranding people when you later legislate provision out of existence altogether.

Sooner or later this is going away. If you announce you're not doing new installations, that starts a timer on the existing users. In 2028 everything in use is at least 5 years old. In summer 2035 everything in use is at least 12 years old. Politically that makes it a lot easier to sell an actual prohibition on supply than it will be for places where that's a sudden overnight change from "Sure, you can use gas" to "No, we're ripping that out".

My country has begun gradually getting rid of POTS copper wire telephone provision. You can still have it, for a little while at least, but we know it has limited lifespan, if you're an outfit who somehow didn't spot the signs and were shipping devices that expect a physical copper line to work, you've had your notice, in a couple of years stuff like that will drop dead. When it's gone, with it goes a bunch of expenses that most people don't benefit from at all. And yes, also some relatively modest benefits are gone too, but mostly it's a burden, we have better things to spend resources on. But you need to give people a heads up first, and that's what this legislation seems to do.

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#236

Post by seizethecheese »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #170
seizethecheese wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this consensus opinion? I personally find gas to be far superior. It could be that I’ve used low quality electric.

No lol, until your average restaurant is all electric (it's not), it's very obviously not superior. Induction is better but nothing really beats gas for speed to reach the desired heat level.

Great point.

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#237

Post by mikeg8 »

aaomidi wrote: post #81

This is a stupid idea for rural NY. Way to increase the cost of living here… Like, this is why people in rural areas hate big cities. This is completely fair for NYC. Not for the rest of NY. Not without a lot of investment from the government. You’re effectively left with oil, wood, and electric heat. All three have a lot of their own problems and difficulties.

Just curious, as I’m not in the NY area but are most rural homes over there on natural gas or propane? In rural parts of CA, people have propane tanks in the yard which wouldn’t be effected by this. Natural gas infrastructure seems to diminish further from cities, so I’m wondering how much this actually effects rural residents

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#238

Post by chokma »

dustymcp wrote: post #200
endisneigh wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I’ve read the same indoor pollution exists with induction even if not vented. The confounding variable is that induction generally is present in new construction which will have proper ventilation. TLDR: it’s a function of ventilation

Cooking itself releases a bunch of stuff that isnt great regardless of stove its entirely on the ventilation.

Yeah, searing meat in the pan will raise the PM2.5 levels in my flat by a factor of 30+.

Re: New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings

#240

Post by bradlys »

I used to not really be for these bans but - the big issue that I find is that due to the gas lobby, we're not going to make progress on this front until hard hitting regulations come in. As long as you have a pipe that is being serviced going to your home - how many people can justify the hookup fee every month along with all the infrastructure to give you gas just for cooking? It's nonsensical because the amount of gas used is trivial. Therefore, the push will always be to use gas heating and other gas appliances as much as possible because the infrastructure for the building is still there. That's what the gas lobby relies on - using your emotional attachment to gas cooking (which has been a long effort by theirs for the last 50+ years) to make sure that they keep getting you to pay them money for gas for heating, drying clothes, etc. even if alternatives exist that are plenty suitable/better-for-us-all.

Also - this is going to be a miniscule amount of difference in the lives of us all. If you're so concerned - buy an old home. Good thing we basically don't ever build anything new. This is a non-issue.

Post reply on HN