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

951–960 of 1001 posts

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

#951

Post by theshrike79 »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #196
philip1209 wrote: post #174

Electricity is a universal protocol - you can generate it with multiple different energy sources, ranging from gas to nuclear. I think this change future-proofs constructions, and makes our infrastructure less fragile.

How is an all-electric infrastructure “less fragile”? I don’t see any advantage for the end user. The only thing that works during a power outage is the gas stove. Regarding power generation, gas is cheap and plentiful and gas power plants are much easier to build than nuclear. Nuclear takes years to get regulatory approval. Anyway, no one’s building nuclear. Germany closed down their last three nuclear plants, for s…

> How is an all-electric infrastructure “less fragile”?

I can generate electricity at home with off the shelf parts. I can also store respectable amounts of it with stuff I can buy off the shelf.

Electricity generation can also be distributed easily, you can have multiple small power plants around the grid.

Gas needs to be centrally pumped out of the ground, processed, pressurised and fed into pipes. There is no practical way for a normal home to make enough of it at home.

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

#952

Post by nuancebydefault »

lotsoweiners wrote: post #606
danans wrote: 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…

> Car pooling. I work from home and hate riding/coordinating with others so I’ll alway just go on my own. > Electric bicycles I only ride bicycles for exercise or as an activity but never to go somewhere. I’m no longer 12. > Insulate your house better? If the government wants to use my tax dollars for this instead of SNAP/TANF then I’m all for them paying for it but it’s not going to be me paying. > Taking turns with…

I understand your points. I'm sure those are valid for you. I'm thinking more about the whole picture. You say you work from home, that's already big influence.

My point in this discussion thread is, i saw 200 Amps at 240 V per household being mentioned, i want to show this should not be the norm or trend. Imo this way of thinking is not leading to an efficient system.

If you have an electric car, you probably don't need to charge it most of the times at the highest current. And when you do, you won't turn on all electric devices with high amperage.

The other examples are just examples, not everyone needs to apply them all. I advocate for the culture shift, the more-is-not-better mentality. This needs to go hand in hand with cleaner technologies and government policies.

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

#953

Post by balderdash »

lobocinza wrote: post #939
ryan-allen wrote: post #928

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induction is the best of both worlds, but you do have to have induction pans. Stainless steel last a lifetime, and are not _that_ expensive, and you can also use cast iron!

> Stainless steel last a lifetime Yes but not the teflon coating.

That’s a non-stick pan not a stainless steel pan

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

#954

Post by balderdash »

ryan-allen wrote: post #928
lobocinza wrote: post #879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's more even in a induction stove than in a gas stove. But maybe that is due to the more expensive frying pan I had to buy.

Induction is the best of both worlds, but you do have to have induction pans. Stainless steel last a lifetime, and are not _that_ expensive, and you can also use cast iron!

What I don’t like about induction is there are no visual cues (lots of flames - low flames) and that if you tilt your pan to move things around you lose basically all your heat source

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

#955

Post by Deeedioo »

iamdamian wrote: post #365

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…

And venting those fumes into the city is okay? Oo

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

#956

Post by simplotek »

evandijk70 wrote: post #828
Pigalowda wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a false equivalence. You’ve either misunderstood or deliberately linked an article that doesn’t support your claim about using natural gas cooking. “Around 2.4 billion people worldwide (around a third of the global population) cook using open fires or inefficient stoves fuelled by kerosene, biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal, which generates harmful household air pollution.” Open fire/stove co…

The above is correct. Additionally, they even mention natural gas as a viable alternative in the abstract: "It is essential to expand use of clean fuels and technologies to reduce household air pollution and protect health. These include solar, electricity, biogas, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), natural gas, alcohol fuels, as well as biomass stoves that meet the emission targets in the WHO Guidelines."

> The above is correct. Additionally, they even mention natural gas as a viable alternative in the abstract:

It isn't, and you clearly failed to read the paper because you're oblivious to its context. The "alternative" was open-flame coal and wood stoves, as well as querosene stoves, which cause extreme levels of indoor pollution and health hazard and are in widespread use in underdeveloped nations.

Natural gas stoves pollute less than open-flame coal and wood stoves, yes, and are therefore a preferable alternative. However, unlike your clueless claim, this does not mean that gas stoves do not lose a health hazard, or that electrical stoves are not far preferable. The WHO report refutes the bullshit claim that gas stoves don't present a health hazard due to the type and levels of indoor air pollution they create.

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

#957

Post by bluGill »

theshrike79 wrote: post #944
collegeburner wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i just looked on home depot dot com gas ranges: $949, $848, $676. boujee model is $1199 induction ranges: $1198 starting, $4138, $1848, $1598, $2498 plus i can't use my nice copper diffuser with them :( nah, imma stick to gas :)

Bought a induction range/oven just a few years ago. Was 450€. Dunno what kind of pricing y'all have on that side of the Atlantic.

Minimum double the cost. Very frustrating as someone with an electric stove that I hate, but it just isn't worth the cost to replace it.

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

#958

Post by pcdoodle »

boplicity wrote: post #590
iamdamian wrote: post #365

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 infra…

You have to have a gas backup in cold climates. You can't just dump NG. -22F is the limit for useful heat production from a heat pump.

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

#959

Post by apnew »

alex_lav wrote: post #935
apnew wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did I say that? I’m saying there is no need for restricting gas range installations via legislation. If the goal is to fight health risks there’s way to mitigate those risks scientifically in other ways that allows people to keep their preferences. Just saying “science” in a sentence doesn’t make your point scientifically valid, we don’t need to turn science into religion.

But...replace gas range with seatbelts or smoking cigarettes indoors and you're repeating exactly the argument that was made while that legislation was happening. "We can't add legislation because I like the dangerous thing"

If I were to take your examples; range hood is the seatbelt; what this legislation is doing is telling driving “too unsafe; everyone must take train”.

Or too take cigarettes example; ban cigarette sales completely instead of banning smoking indoors.

I hope you see the nuance now.

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

#960

Post by sharemywin »

NeverFade wrote: post #788
slashdev wrote: post #749

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…

> Why don’t we band together, mass produce 2500 nuclear plants that are at least as large, and make an actual difference. Because the same climate activists who keep harping on the "climate crisis" and successfully push policies like in OP, are also irrationally opposed to nuclear energy. Since these folks are calling the shots, we're heading into an energy crisis in which: 1. More and more demand is placed on our po…

I grabbed some stats off google: solar nuclear and battery costs

Companies that are planning new nuclear units are currently indicating that the total costs (including escalation and financing costs) will be in the range of $5,500/kW to $8,100/kW or between $6 billion and $9 billion for each 1,100 MW plant.

Installing a solar farms will cost about $0.80 to $1.36 per watt. Solar farm costs can be estimated by energy output (megawatts) or size (acres). One megawatt is the power equal to 1 million watts, and one megawatt will power about 164 homes. ~$800-$1360/kw

Battery: $152/kWh Now, BNEF expects the volume-weighted average battery pack price to rise to $152/kWh in 2023

Post reply on HN