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

nytimes.com

881–890 of 1001 posts

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

#881
post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induction cooktops are not expensive anymore. This would have been an argument 10 or 15 years ago but not today. The price difference between a resistive 4 element resistive and a inductive cooktop is like 20€ maybe 30€ tops. So a cheap one will cost you between 200€ to 250€ (maybe the pricing in US is totally different but that is what you pay for the cheap stuff here in Finland)

I live in America. Builders will definitely cut corners to save $20. Hands down. Even brand new houses that sell for $500k will have "builder quality paint" that needs to be repainted in 5-7 years because it is cheap. If they cut corners on paint, they will cut corners on your stove.

Don't have experience, but I'd guess a buyer/renter won't see a difference between grades of paint quality, but a resistive vs. induction cooktop will be very noticeable and may raise the value far beyond the price difference.

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

#882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> And will they have induction safe cookware? Cant you just put a steel plate under any pan, and then it’s induction compatible? Ideally you’d have compatible pans, but you don’t have to.

Not all kinds of steel have strong magnetic properties. I had to buy a new pan when I moved to induction because my steel pan didn't work at all.

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

#883

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induction cooktops are like 3-5x the cost of resistive ones, and so very few homes for rent -even ones with electric cooktops - have them.

I'm actually so confused about this. When I was in college, I bought a portable induction cooker off Amazon for $60. It was the best. I could boil a large pot of water in about the same time as the gas stove I had at home. (I never timed it, but it felt basically the same.) I could have bought four of those induction cookers for less than $250. If I ever built a house (I currently rent an apartment and am stuck with…

Probably marketing as portable and full range are different markets/consumers. Could also be due to volume. Full ranges might be manufactured at a smaller and less efficient scale. It's also possible that they have better components, are more durable, have more features and more power. Induction cookers can cook faster than gas.

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

#884

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reducing quality of life to be more like the rest of the world is not really a great sales pitch. america is a sales-driven society.

Dumbest take I've heard all day. Banning gas would increase quality of life. Why subject yourself to pollution, gas leaks and expensive secondary energy infrastructure when you can just not do that. I understand the gas lobby has spent billions convincing you otherwise, but the fact is that direct natural gas is far inferior to electricity at this point. Some education for you: https://youtu.be/hX2aZUav-54

calling people dumb is also a really bad sales pitch.

the problem with nanny-state types is they're just terrible at convincing anyone of anything, which is why they're always so upset at everyone else for being so dumb and ignorant.

"i didn't call you dumb, i said this is a dumb take!"

the problem with nanny-state types is ...

anyway, i'm going to go cook some factory farmed pork bacon on my gas range and then hop into my pickup truck and drive about an hour to go visit my parents in the suburbs, catch you later.

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

#885
post #581

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…

> 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.

> No way I'm throwing out my 20 years old stove to save 2 minutes boiling water

A normal electric stove isn't even going to be two minutes slower to boil. Depending on the stoves in question, the resistive stove might even be faster to a boil than the gas stove, even if the gas stove is rated for more BTUs.

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

#886
post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what electric stove will their apartment have, resistance or induction I'd assume nobody would install a resistance stove in a new apartment (since this only applies to those)

They certainly won’t install an expensive induction stove in housing for poor people

What proportion of new housing is built for "poor people" to live? I was under the assumption that most new developments are aimed at the mid/high end of the market which makes older buildings more accessible to low income households.

Also induction stoves are quite cheap nowadays (in relation to the overall cost) so it would seem absurd for me to get a resistive one even if you could save $100-200

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

#887

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning gas for heating has a reasonable climate change argument. In Vancouver heating systems in new buildings will have to be zero emission soon. That makes some sense at least. Banning it for cooking seems to be another case of focusing on things that don’t move the needle. Meanwhile coal power plants continue to operate. There are less than 2500 major coal power plants worldwide. Why don’t we band together, mass…

I agree that banning gas for cooking is not important to control climate change. But for new buildings that do not require gas for heating, does it make sense to construct and maintain gas infrastructure just for cooking?

No it doesn't. At least it doesn't make financial sense.

I believe that Vancouver banned gas for home heating but left the door open to allow gas for cooking, but when I read articles about this at the time of the change, contractors quoted said it would be really silly to go to all the effort to create a gas hookup just for cooking. Likely would be very little uptake, and only by super wealthy enthusiast cooks who demand gas for some reason.

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

#888
post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love my gas stove, won't live without one, and it keeps my home warm in the winter even when the power goes out. Gas is much more cost effective than electric as well. Also lobe my gas water heater for the same reason. Hot baths during blackouts. This whole "gas is bad for the environment" is bunk when fossil fuels are required to generate al that electricity and that doesn't even get to the cost and efficiency of st…

Do your gas appliances actually work when the power is out? I guess you could light the stove with a match but aren’t most boilers going to be electrically controlled such that they won’t work without power. It also seems like a bit of a weird reason to me as a big reason. But maybe you get a lot more power outages than I do. (I would imagine somewhere with a gas main, where gas heating can be economical, would not h…

Gas water heaters usually have a thermopile for their controls. Once the pilot is lit which can be done with one of those ignition clicker buttons (purely mechanical). There's no electric hookup to my water heater, nor have I ever had an electric hookup to any gas water heater.

Gas is also often more reliable than electricity as gas is practically always buried while electricity has many overhead lines in the mix.

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

#889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in China for a decade and never once saw an electric stove.

I've lived in Oak Park, IL for over a decade, shopping for houses several times, and have never seen an electric stove. What's your point? What's clearly the case is that homes in China do not generally have the ultra-powered gas wok burners that restaurants do, which is what people are talking about when they talk about what's distinctive about cooking on a wok.

woks are round (hemispherical) on the bottom, gas is better for heating that shape

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

#890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The Metro Statistical Area of the city is 25 million, which differs quite drastically from the de jure municipal and state borders.

NY government doesn't govern across state borders?
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