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

nytimes.com

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

#581
post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also _rent_. I hate food cooked on electric stoves, so when I was looking to rent, anything that dint have gas stove was automatic non-starter for me. This whole argument that “you oppose a forced choice so you must hate poor people” is just a straw-man. Just because you prefer things one way doesn’t mean govt has a business telling me how I should cook my food.

I suspect you're conflating resistance cooktops (the kind with coils that heat up) and induction cooktops (which use EM fields to transfer energy directly into the pan). Resistance cooktops are slow and weak, but induction cooktops are just plain better than gas (faster to heat across the entire temperature range, better temperature control) in pretty much every case except when needing a pan that doesn't fit the ind…

> Resistance cooktops are slow and weak

Resistive is just fine. No way I'm throwing out my 20 years old stove to save 2 minutes boiling water. Once the coil is red hot there's virtually no time difference with induction.

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

#582

Good for them. Heat pumps obviate the need for gas heating, and gas stoves aren’t worth the trouble with induction posing a reasonable alternative.

Exactly. Homes built now should be in their prime in the mid 2040s. At that point, we really, really, really don't want to need gas infrastructure for our homes. (If we get to that point, and a significant percentage of people are still heating their homes with gas, then how are we not screwed?)

We need to be building zero emissions homes. (Or as close to it as we can.) The heating technology already exists to replace most single family home gas heating. That begs the question: Why invest in gas infrastructure just for a gas stove? That, frankly, seems shortsighted.

This isn't just about individual choices, or even individual homes. This is about transitioning away from government supported infrastructure that brings gas to homes, which is a society-wide issues. 20 years from now, gas pipes to homes should be seen as unnecessary.

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

#583
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Car pooling. > Electric bicycles > Insulate your house better? > Taking turns with neighbours to do grocery shopping or bringing kids to school. > Try to repair stuff in stead of bying new. > Drying clothes with renewable wind energy. (a hanging rack) People do these things anyways with the right incentives, just to save time and money. But we still need to get off of fossil fuels for transportation and electricity…

I agree, but it needs to be a combination of change of infrastructure and people's habits. After all it is just culture and culture evolves,so let it evolve in the right direction. 200 amps to every household seems not to be the right direction.

As behind-the-meter demand management technology advances, and behind the meter storage becomes more affordable, we will be able to increasingly support high power use cases without needing 200A service drops at all. This is where we will end up: sipping power through a straw and storing it for short bursts of high-power usage.

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

#584
How about facts for a change?

How many new housing units are built in the State of NY per year?

I'll call it 20K.

https://furmancenter.org/news/press-release/new-york-built-1...

Let's go with the moonshot proposal of 50K per year (good luck):

https://www.bdcnetwork.com/new-york-city-advances-plan-build...

How many housing units in NY State?

Approximately 8 million.

https://www.infoplease.com/us/census/new-york/housing-statis...

How many housing units in the entire nation?

Approximately 140 million.

What percentage of CO2 does the US contribute to the planet?

Approximately 14%.

Look for the pie-chart about half-way down.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emi...

First conclusion:

    If the US evaporated from the planet tomorrow, 
    CO2 production would only decrease by 14%.
    
    Global CO2 would continue to increase at the same rate.
    
    The net effect on climate would be zero.
Second conclusion:

    The proposal is to force 0.6% of NY State housing 
    units to use electric stoves.
    
    The proposal is to force 0.04% of US housing units
    to use electric stoves.
    
    Electric stoves are NOT zero-emission devices.  
    Less, yes, not zero.
    
    Even assuming zero emissions, the net effect on US CO2 
    contribution will effectively be zero.

Third conclusion:

    This proposal is empty and ridiculous.
    
    It has no foundation in evidence of any kind.
    
    It does, however, serve to garner votes from those 
    who believe in this stuff blindly and follow politicians 
    like they actually know and care about any of this stuff.
Wait!

    Wait a minute!  You are only considering one year?
    How about 50 years?
    
Right. So, the US continues to contribute CO2 to the world at a rate likely exceeding 14% of the total contribution and, somehow we are going to save the plante by not cooking using gas for half an hour per day?

What do you want to bet that the act of constructing 50K new housing units per year will generate far more CO2 than those 50K gas stoves will generate for their entire useful lifetimes?

Seriously! Is anyone even interested in science and evidence any more?

    But, but, health?
Seriously? With eight billion people around the world, millions must be dropping dead every day because they cook for half an hour per day using fire. The horror!

This thing has become a blind belief system, not a subject people can discuss based on facts-based hypothesis that allow anyone to reproduce the results and confirm the conclusions.

A couple of potential definitions of the term:

    Believing something in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
    
    or...

    A strong belief in a supernatural power in support of a conclusion.

    or...

    Magic.
Believing that forcing 0.6% of the stoves in NY State per year will have an effect on climate change is a belief so ridiculous that, in a rational society, it would be summarily laughed off the stage.

Yet, this isn't a rational society. It is a tribalized society based on blind beliefs of all kinds promoted through social media and mercilessly used by politicians to get the unthinking masses to vote for them.

Blind belief is a powerful tool.

With help, it seems to be a LOT easier to get the masses to believe in absolute nonsense than to actually work hard and deliver tangible results that actually benefit society. This is particularly true when the politician can take advantage of complicit actors in society who also stand to benefit from the nonsense they want to sell or the power they aim to acquire.

People, companies, are making money and gaining power with this belief system hand-over-fist. It is amazing to watch this happen as an objective observer. It is frustrating to yell out loud "The emperor has no clothes" only to be met with blind belief and ignorance of facts, as if it were a virtue.

This proposal is like claiming that banning birthday candles and fireworks will save the planet. It's ridiculous, idiotic, demonstrably false and anyone who can add 1 + 1 and get 2 should see it as such.

Hold on. Here come the attacks...

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

#586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was being hyperbolic. I didn't pay attention to the 87k news, since Fox News and Ted Cruz talked about it I assumed it was meaningless distraction.

> I was being hyperbolic Yes. You and the people you are criticizing.

I'm not a "journalist" nor do I, fact-sharer or opinion-spewer, have hundreds of thousands of followers. The obligations I have to society in this regard are lower than cable news.

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

#587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you're conflating resistance cooktops (the kind with coils that heat up) and induction cooktops (which use EM fields to transfer energy directly into the pan). Resistance cooktops are slow and weak, but induction cooktops are just plain better than gas (faster to heat across the entire temperature range, better temperature control) in pretty much every case except when needing a pan that doesn't fit the ind…

Yeah, and if you’re talking about poor people, what electric stove will their apartment have, resistance or induction? And will they have induction safe cookware? Banning gas stoves would be a huge blow to all the immigrants who rely on cooking techniques (like woks) that don’t work well on resistance coils, and require expensive special equipment to work on induction.

[flagged]

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

#588

I'll be burying a 1000 gallon propane tank, for propane heating and two propane ranges (I have an apartment I've constructed) within the next year, with a propane generator to help during power outages, while I still can. I'll be heating/cooling primarily with a heat pump, but it simply cannot be relied upon for safety. This is ultimately performative, as it doesn't really help reach carbon targets, and politically i…

out of curiosity in which state do you live

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

#589
post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about we go after the coal power plants first? Or allow nuclear reactors on shipping vessels? Both of those will have 1000x more benefit than paper straws and electric stoves, whose benefits are questionable at best. There's plenty of lower-hanging fruit to go after.

How about not, unless there is a reason why it is not possible to do multiple things in parallel?

Because we're not doing the things that are truly impactful and have no cost to individuals, and instead focusing on changes that are annoying and useless. Plastic bags, plastic straws, gas stoves, the list goes on and on. All the while, the Germans have turned the coal power plants back on.

That does not suggest that anyone is taking the environmental effects of their choices very seriously, and that they just want to lower peoples' standard of living and intrude on our lives. If that's what this is really about, then how about none of it?

I'm sure you understand that if people continue getting inconvenienced in the name of climate change while governments and big corporations go on pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at industrial scale, that's what's going to happen: instead of everyone making the changes they need to make, the vast majority of people will do nothing. The hypocrisy is not lost on anyone.

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

#590

This regulation feels quite frustrating to me, and several comments in this thread illustrate why. This change is being promoted as a critical step in the fight against climate change. (See most news articles over the past two years covering this.) But when you dig into the details, it seems like the regulation may not have much effect on climate change at all. When you point this out to advocates, you'll get an enti…

> This change is being promoted as a critical step in the fight against climate change.

27 years from now, when we're supposedly going to be "net zero", do we really want to be supporting a bunch of natural gas infrastructure?

Or should we start making that expensive infrastructure not necessary?

1. Most homes built now will be around in 27 years, and still in good shape.

2. Building and maintaining natural gas infrastructure to homes is expensive.

3. Gas heating is easily replaced by heat pumps, even in cold climates. It should be difficult to justify any gas heat installs in new homes. (Though, more support should be provided in terms of power redundancy in very cold climates.)

4. It's just not worth it to support gas infrastructure just for gas stoves.

If you look at the big picture, and the medium to long term is just doesn't make sense to build out gas-dependent housing. And it really doesn't make sense to build out all of that infrastructure just for gas stoves.

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