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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

#641

Post by brewdad »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #615
kibwen wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus electric goes out often. Gas doesn’t. Most gas appliances also require electricity to run, and in addition the broader gas infrastructure itself requires electricity to compress the gas so that it reaches the consumer. There's no getting around the need for reliable electric infrastructure; centralized gas infrastructure won't save you from unreliable electricity.

> centralized gas infrastructure won't save you from unreliable electricity It absolutely will and the gas infrastructure is far more reliable than the electricity one. My gas fired boiler can heat my house for days running off my Yeti battery pack. That same Yeti couldn't put a dent in the cold weather we had this year. Running my generator (on LP or NG or Gasoline) would allow me to keep my boiler running effective…

Even in extreme cold environments, assuming your home is properly insulated, a 12 hour power outage means you might have to put on a sweater. Yes, multi-day outages are a problem but I think I’ve experienced two of them in my 50 years of life. Not worth worrying about.

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

#642

Post by giardini »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #255

The reactions to the gas hookup ban really reminds me of how insular Americans really are. They can’t even imagine a world where gas does not come in pipes, when arguably that’s how the vast majority of the world lives. You want a gas stove? Buy a gas stove, and get a cylinder. No one is stopping you from doing that. Just don’t expect everyone else to subsidize running that gas in a pipe up to your gas stove.

No one "subsidizes" gas pipelines in most areas. Usually it is a (gasp) capitalistic private company that does that.

But I agree it is easy to do it yourself with propane with one proviso: propane(like butane) has the somewhat insidious property that it is heavier than air so it flows downhill as it dissipates. If it flows to a spark or fire then a flame will spread from the point of first ignition to the propane source.

So if you decide to build a home with a propane(or butane) tank you might consider locating your home on or near a hilltop (that you also own) so that any propane fumes roll away from your property:

https://propanehq.com/do-propane-fumes-rise-or-fall/

Natural gas is much lighter than air and rises quickly up and out of structures. b/c it dissipates so rapidly it is far, far safer than propane. But it is not as easily compressed as is propane so natgas is usually transported to the user in pipes at low pressure.

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/questions/why-st...

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

#644

Post by 14u2c »

nemo44x wrote: post #512
kibwen wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternatives to gas are so good these days that there's no way I'd pay to connect any new house to gas.

Gas alliances are significantly cheaper to run. Also perform better. Gas dryers are awesome compared to electric for example. Plus electric goes out often. Gas doesn’t.

> Plus electric goes out often.

On the US east coast it does not. Very rare occurrence, to the point where a major blackout is a noteworthy event.

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

#645

Post by brewdad »

toast0 wrote: post #228
amrocha wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "shit hits the fan" to the point that you don't have electricity for several weeks then it's unreasonable to expect to be able to shelter in your own home imo.

In the conditions where electricity is out for several weeks, transportation between your home and a community shelter may also be unreasonable.

Not necessarily. The two times in my life when we had week long power outages, the root cause was an ice storm that brought down trees onto power lines. The ice only lasted a couple days but the damage took longer to repair. Roads were cleared within a couple days. If you live in a remote enough place where your road won’t be cleared shortly after the storm, you need to have a backup plan that doesn’t rely on any outside services.

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

#646

Post by brewdad »

giardini wrote: post #626
ricardobayes wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my area I got a 50k quote to get connected to mains gas even though it's less than 200 meters away. They can pound sand, even the a state-of-the-art heat pump system is a fraction of that.

Possibly get a reasonable bid for a propane gas system?

Or use the electric service they already have.

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

#647

Post by fwungy »

rgmerk wrote: post #488
fwungy wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but at that point it's like running an AC during a hot Summer day. The compressor will be working very hard to keep up with -20. Our leaders have lost their minds pursuing green purity. It's a religion at this point.

-20 - at which point the COP of the heat pump I linked to is still well above 1 - is equal to the coldest temperature on record in the locations I mentioned. Not the coldest daily maximum. The coldest temperature ever recorded, and the heat pump still wouldn’t require any backup system. Yes, it’s probably working hard at that point, but so? We’re talking exceptional conditions for the location. And for the other 99.9…

So you have all the heat pumps going on full blast on the coldest days, all together. It's a huge spike in energy demand. As long as the grid can deliver it fine, but when it doesn't the potential is catastrophic. Natural gas heating is far less grid dependent. Even if you lose power you could run a gas furnace with a small generator. Not the case with a heat pump.

Rationally speaking we can only turn the ship as fast as it can turn. Rushing and forcing things to happen that do not have a solid foundation (i.e. a suitable large and reliable grid) are just going to cause problems.

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

#648

Post by MattRix »

iamdamian wrote: post #436
jnwatson wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t buy the climate argument. However, banning gas appliances comes from the same place as banning lead paint. Gas appliances are a major source of indoor pollution. Gas heating leaks pollution inside the home, especially as furnaces age. Plus, many residents don’t own their own property. This helps protect renters.

Yes, but this regulation targets everyone in the state of New York, not just renters, and the research I've read seems to indicate that fume hoods protect against this indoor pollution.

I remember seeing a stufy fairly recent that discovered that they actually weren’t very effective, especially if you use the front burners. My intuition about it is that if you can smell the food, you’re probably also getting air pollution.

On top of that I’m not sure if anyone has studied what percentage of people actually turn their fume hoods on, because I bet that is low too.

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

#649

Post by pclmulqdq »

amluto wrote: post #629
pclmulqdq wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I generally follow the idea that if a paper has one revealed error, it probably has a lot more errors that they didn't provide enough evidence to catch, so I didn't read what the correction was. This is a pretty dumb error to get through the writing process. Also, if you want to see some well-cited posts on the tenuous evidence of health effects of NOx, other posts in this comments section have plenty of source…

On a quick search, NO may not be particularly toxic at the concentrations in question. (And your body produces it!). NO seems like it’s mostly a problem outdoors because of other stuff it reacts with. But NO2 is certainly toxic, and it looks like stoves product about 1/4 as much NO2 as total NOx. (I also recall reading that stoves, with no pot or pan on them, produce minimal CO, but that gas ovens produce lots of CO.…

One extra thing about both NO and NO2 that the narrative on this really discounts (but you touched on) is that they are both fairly reactive, so they tend not to linger in the air. This makes them damaging to whatever environment the end up in, but a lot less likely to build up to toxic levels than stable molecules like CO and CO2. The dose makes the poison, and these ones are hard to get in high dosages.

And yeah, the cheap residential gas ovens really suck, and likely put out a lot more of the bad stuff (both CH4 and CO, but also probably the NOx compounds too) than stovetops. Mixed fuel is now the hot thing in ranges: gas burners and electric ovens.

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

#650

Post by 7speter »

hedora wrote: post #559
7speter wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres a comment upthread championing this law because eventually government will ban all the miscreants who use gas powered appliances and heating from using them and using something much more hip and palatable to a subset of voters who can afford expensive house upgrades and electric cars at the snap of a finger.

A top end GE induction range top is $1700. A lower end one is $400. These are both rounding errors vs. a year of energy bills. If you want something even cheaper (for instance, because you hate your tenants, and they are paying the power bill), resistive ones are still available.

Are you going to be paying for the electrical upgrades to homes that people on fixed incomes will need to get their 100+ year old homes up to code to be able to use one of these induction tops or should they just not live in a house to make you feel good?
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