281–290 of 1001 posts
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.
That sounds pretty fragile to me.
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+1 regarding cooking gas being a minuscule amount of gas usage overall. And not to mention, gas is still the first choice for most serious cooks, so the small benefit comes at relatively large cost to lifestyle. Regarding heat pumps phasing out gas heat, in NY it isn’t feasible. It gets too cold. In more temperate climates, sure, but in the northern US and further, there will be a need for on-demand heat for a long t…
Most new buildings in NYC are already heat pump based. For the obvious reason that it’s much cheaper. Ban cooking gas as well, and they save a ton of money running gas pipes, and utility companies having to maintain that gas pipe. Also, “serious cooks” can still use their gas stoves. They just need to hook it up to a cylinder like most of the world manages just fine, but apparently the people in the richest country i…
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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
One of the concerns is nitrogen oxides (mostly nitrogen dioxide, as I recall) from high temperature combustion. Car engines attempt to limit combustion temperatures (usually by adding some exhaust gasses to the intake air) to reduce its production. Ventilation prevents it from reaching hazardous levels from a gas stove; induction does not produce it.
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Maybe this is a bit of a tangent but... shouldn't the world as a whole not be thinking about how to consume less in stead of obsessing with how to do the clean energy transition, without changing our habits a bit? If you think about it, there is still plenty of room for optimizing our energy consumption. The trend seems to be, replace the gasoline car not with a more fuel efficient one but rather with a car weighing…
> 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 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…
There's the fact that you are actually burning fuel, which released noxious fumes into the home [1]. There's mounting evidence that this sort of exposure has pretty negative health implications [2]
Gas is also inherently dangerous, more-so than electricity. There's been more than a few examples of exploded homes/buildings due to gas leaks [3]. All it takes is for someone to accidentally leave a burner on unstarted (or for a kid to do it while playing around the home).
But as for cooking, heat pumps won't work there. What you're more likely to see is either homes coming standard with thick enough lines to power everything or stoves with batteries (think about it, a stove is off 90% of the time, so why not slowly charge a battery during that time for the times when you need to cook fast?)
[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c04707
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.
As California has shown multiple times, dependence on electricity alone can be disastrous.
Plus, I'm paying over $0.50/kWh when I hit Tier 3, which I hit after 2 charges of my EV. Everything is untenable. There is no strategy at all. It's just a mess of ideology and dogma but no science or logic, it's infuriating!
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That’s a fallacy. You can make anything into a slippery slope.
It seems to me that every time people reference the slippery slope fallacy, the people claiming slippery slope get proven right 10 years down the line. Even in this case, banning gas in new buildings implies that gas will be banned in the future!
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…
The electric stuff works if you provide electricity to it. That doesn't have to be grid elecetricity
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My gas heat goes down if electricity fails.
My gas stove can be connected to a gas tank which can be bought at a gas station for less than $30USD... I can also purchase a propane heater from Home Depot or Lowes which can run off the same gas tanks for less than $200USD.
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.