New York to ban natural gas, including stoves, in new buildings • Hacker News Board

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

#831

Post by evandijk70 » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 3:12 PM UTC

slashdev wrote: post #749

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…

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?

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

#832

Post by jablongo » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

nullc wrote: post #676

justeleblanc wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You bought a shitty heat pump and decided you were okay with living in a state that produces electricity using fossil fuels. What's your point again?

What state doesn't produce electricity using fossil fuels? At midnight last night, which wasn't atypical, California was 50% natural gas and the total CO2 emitting is even greater due to imports and CO2 emitting renewables.

Vermont is mostly green via hydroelectric and wind

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

#833

Post by azemetre » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 3:18 PM UTC

keneda7 wrote: post #533

azemetre wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never seen an actual fume hood in any residential home in my life (close to 800 homes across the South and New England. I have seen plenty of faux hoods that do absolutely nothing. Maybe it's something they only add in luxury homes.

I find this very shocking NY allows that. I'm in CA and I've never seen a gas stove that didn't have a fume hood. In fact a lot of electric stoves here have fume hoods. I would assume we have a regulation about it here but I've never looked it up.

That's odd, I mean my apartment has a "vent hood" but it just feeds into a sponge into a wall with no ventilation leading outside. These are the types of hoods I've only seen in my life, only in professional kitchens have I seen true ventilation and even then some kitchens are moving to induction sense it's a much safer work environment and speeds up cooking but even then you still need ventilation.

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

#834

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

beepbooptheory wrote: post #778

bombcar wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I know is I've yet to see an all-electric commercial kitchen. I assume they exist somewhere, but I've yet to see one.

Portable induction stoves were used in a few kitchens I've worked in, but as a supplementary tool, e.g., the pastry guy needs to make jam while the line is really busy. The main thing that makes electric stoves hard for a professional kitchen is ultimately speed and space. You need every single burner during a rush, and you need to be reacting quick, and there is usually very limited space. If I need to stop the heat…

> An electric top requires you to actually move the pan off the burner to somewhere else

Is this true of induction? I've never used induction for anything more complicated than pasta, but I would have thought that since the surface (basically) doesn't get hot, turning it off would function the same way as a gas stove.

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

#835

Post by mercutio2 » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #767

brewdad wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does. Unless you think reforming regulators will somehow be easier.

Banning turns enforcement from a "is this gas stove properly vented, when inspected before either are installed" to a "is that a gas hookup for this building? wtf"

Every new building already has a raft of inspections.

Banning something at construction time has by far the least regulatory impact of any intervention.

If anyone was proposing turning off existing methane infrastructure, that would be quite different.

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

#836

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 3:33 PM UTC

otterley wrote: post #564

crooked-v wrote: post #544

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…

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 gas), I would at least be tempted to literally do that, instead of spending the money on a "real" cooking range.

Why are full ranges so expensive?

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

#837

Post by armenarmen » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 3:39 PM UTC

ahoy wrote: post #445

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…

I _rent_ a home, as do a full half of new york state residents. I'd love an electric stove. Every rental I've ever lived in has a gas stove and no fume hood. The full half of new yorkers who rent - almost 20 million people - mostly get whatever theirlandlord picked. So when I read posts like this, decrying government overreach, I wonder if you've ever been poor? Have you ever lived here? Do you know what youre talkin…

For real check out ductless range hoods, a quick search and I found one at around $130

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

#838

Post by screwturner68 » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 3:42 PM UTC

macinjosh wrote: post #811

ahoy wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I _rent_ a home, as do a full half of new york state residents. I'd love an electric stove. Every rental I've ever lived in has a gas stove and no fume hood. The full half of new yorkers who rent - almost 20 million people - mostly get whatever theirlandlord picked. So when I read posts like this, decrying government overreach, I wonder if you've ever been poor? Have you ever lived here? Do you know what youre talkin…

How does a gas stove make your landlord wealthier? What you are really saying is you want the entire world to adjust to your personal preferences, that is childish.

LL here, my guess is that gas stoves are a little cheaper and I don't have to drag 100/200amp service to every apartment instead of the usual 60amp service they likely have. Add to that getting permits could take years in NYC. I looked into going all electric but the numbers were horrible, it was ~$25,000 per unit with no noticeable difference. There's no greed involved it's just math.

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

#839

Post by screwturner68 » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 3:49 PM UTC

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…

I'm looking forward to going all electric in my small by most standards apartment buildings but I'm not going to tear out my existing mechanical to make it happen today. The upgrade is about $25K a unit for the electrical upgrade, new stove, water heater and HVAC system. I know it's coming but it's not today -everything in my building is high-efficiency and low flow and was the best you could get when I did my last remodel, there's lots of people doing a lot more damage than me and the people in my building. We also have to redo our grid as there is no way it can support an all electric society in the state it's in now we'd be in constant brown out.

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

#840

Post by amluto » Sun, Apr 30, 2023, 4:03 PM UTC

hackernewds wrote: post #827

amluto wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of places like this don’t have natural gas. It’s often propane tanks, which have their own issues. Natural gas plumbing is not some magical, amazing thing that magically delivers a much-maligned but otherwise perfect product. It’s an explosive gas that’s piped through underground pipes with fancy pressure regulators and hopefully ends up somewhere useful. Those pipes are expensive, the regulators are complex and…

How do you reckon district heating would work, better than gas heating?

With underground pipes carrying warm water and returning colder water to the plant [0]. This is agnostic to the heat source, small leaks are not polluting or dangerous, and large leaks don’t explode.

IMO the real problems with district heating are a lack of large-scale standardization (you can’t go to your local HVAC installer and ask for an off-the-shelf heater to pair with a district heating system) and that heat pumps are good enough and cheap enough that they erase some of the benefit.

That being said, a district heating system can inexpensively store heat for later use, whereas electric systems cannot easily do this. (Gas can be stored inexpensively on a large scale, too, which I think is really the major remaining current benefit of natural gas over electricity.)

I can imagine a modern system for a cold-but-mostly-sunny climate: a big PV (and optionally wind) installation produces electricity. When electricity is cheap (sunny / windy conditions), heat pumps heat a thermal reservoir sized to hold a few weeks of heat (this could be a large container of water or even just a bunch of earth insulated on the sides). During cold conditions with less power, heat from the reservoir is used for district heat.

I don’t know whether this would be economical compared to batteries, pumped hydro, gas peaking plants, etc.

[0] District heating with steam is a thing, but it requires higher temperatures, which is not so great if the heat source is a heat pump or waste heat from a lowish-temperature process. It’s not even great if the source is a dedicated boiler, since more energy is available from the same amount of fuel if the flue gas can be cooled below its condensation temperature. (Old systems did not do that, since the materials they were made of would be rapidly corroded by condensate.)