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Berkeley first city in California to ban natural gas in new buildings
- booi 7y agoThat seems incredibly short-sighted. Currently, using electricity for heating generates significantly more CO2 than natural gas and you can always switch to electric heating when the sources become more renewable.
- perfunctory 7y ago> using electricity for heating generates significantly more CO2 than natural gas Do you have a source for this? It may vary per locality I guess. From the article: " in Berkeley, electricity is cleaner than gas: at least 78% carbon-free."
- ars 7y agoYou forget that energy is fungible. If Berkley is using more clean electricity then someone else can't. So it's important to use the best technology at the consumption side. This new policy, on a global level, will cause the emission of more co2, and is thus incredibly shortsighted.
- abdullahkhalids 7y agoThink of it in terms of economics. If new buildings can do whatever, it will increase the demand for both (clean or dirty) electricity and natural gas. If they can only install electric heating/cooling, then only the demand for (clean and dirty) electricity increases. So this law indirectly promotes the clean electricity industry.
- ars 7y agoThe clean energy industry is maxed out. All this law does is promote the dirty energy industry.
- paranoidrobot 7y ago> If Berkley is using more clean electricity then someone else can't. I don't follow this statement at all. There's not a limit[0] on the amount of energy that can be supplied from renewable sources. Preferentially purchasing green or greener energy sends a signal to the market to develop more green energy generation capabilities to meet those demands. [0] within reason. Obviously there's limits to the amount of energy we can harness from renewable sources, but those limits are far higher than our total energy needs.
- ars 7y ago> There's not a limit[0] on the amount of energy that can be supplied from renewable sources. Yes there is, the limit is how many power plants have been currently built. So this new ban by Berkeley is very very foolish and counterproductive. Right now, today, by making people heat with electricity instead of natural gas, they force additional electrical generation with coal or natural gas, and since there is a ton of transmission waste, it's even worse.
- scottlocklin 7y ago>"..at least 78% carbon-free." Well that's obvious nonsense. Usually I laugh when the Berkeley City Council tries to save the world (broadcasting its deliberations would make a great reality TV show), but in this case, it makes sense: the imbecile heaters used in the Bay Area seem designed to heat the outdoors. It boggles my mind they can't figure out how to buy gas heaters from the East Coast where they're designed to heat the inside of the house.
- pankajdoharey 7y agoHow would heating with electricity generate any CO2 if it were sourced from Solar or Wind?
- hprotagonist 7y agoIt wouldn’t, but man do we still burn a lot of coal in the US for electric plants.
- scarejunba 7y agoNot in California. And California overproduces power by state law.
- hprotagonist 7y agohttps://www.snl.com/web/client?auth=inherit#news/article?id=34113318&KeyProductLinkType=0&cdid=A-34113318-14128 https://www.snl.com/web/client?auth=inherit#news/article?id=... coal is always kind of lurking in the background though.
- ars 7y agoBecause you can not pin down the source of electricity that way. It's all mixed together.
- mehrdadn 7y agoWell the creation of the necessary metals and semiconductors would probably generate CO2... but I don't know how much.
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago> Based on that study, solar PV works out to about 50g of CO2 per kWh compared to coal's 975g of CO2 per kWh, or about 20x "cleaner." [1] [1] https://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/how-much-co2-does-one-solar-panel-create https://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/ho...
- adrianN 7y agoYou probably want to install heat pumps instead of resistive heaters. Then you get 3-5J of heat for every Joule of electricity. Retrofitting those into a house with gas heating is quite expensive, so not using fossil fuels for new construction in the first place is probably the right decision. In Berkeley you can probably slap a small number of solar panels on the roof to produce more electricity than you need for heating (and cooling).
- perbu 7y agoIt really isn't very expensive. Installation is mostly connecting the inside unit with the outside unit through an 8-10mm pipe (1/3"). The work is about 2-3 hours and material costs are pretty insignificant. The HX units are pretty costly, though. About $2K for a decent one. Where I live, Norway, a lot of houses have gotten these retrofitted.
- adrianN 7y agoOh that's interesting. What I've heard is that changing the heating system from radiators that use water heated by gas (as is common in German gas heating systems) to a heat pump is difficult because heat pumps don't give you such high temperatures. So you'd need a lot more surface area to heat adequately with the lower temperatures provided by your heat pump, i.e. you'd need to switch to underfloor heating, which means ripping open all your floors. Glad to hear that there are apparently simpler ways. We need to switch almost all buildings over to heat pumps over the next two or three decades after all.
- benjymo 7y agoAFAIK it's not ideal but possible to use existing radiators. My parents recently added an air heatpump to their existing (wood) heating system without changing radiators. They Installed a new boiler (water tank, not sure about the translation) where the top half is heated by the heat pump and they can optionally heat the whole tank using the old wood heater.
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
- paranoidrobot 7y agoThe key word there is currently, and it depends entirely on your local area what your mix of energy production is and how clean that is. There's no net-zero carbon options on the market for natural gas. So installing gas-fired options for heating/cooling means that you don't have the option of choosing from a green energy source. Installing electrical heating means that you do have that option - you can reduce the amount of energy you need through local energy production (solar PV, solar hot water), you can store energy locally reducing the need for off-site generation, and you can choose to purchase power from off-site generators that are cleaner.
- __sy__ 7y agoFrankly, I'm not even sure you need to regulate against natural gas. Product-wise & economically, it's already lost. Electric heat pumps are fantastically more efficient [1] and work both for heating & cooling. Electric water heaters are cheaper/better to operate. Induction stoves are so fast and precise. I don't know about a commercial building, but for a home, you'd probably save $10K+ in piping, installation, and connection fees. [1] https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/06/heat-pumps-work-miracles/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/06/heat-pumps-work-miracles/
- mobilefriendly 7y agoHeat pumps are a disaster when temperatures drop below 20 degrees F. We end up using auxiliary heat which is extremely inefficient and expensive.
- adrianN 7y agoHow often does that happen in Berkeley?
- PhantomGremlin 7y agoFortunately for this particular case, Berkeley winter temperature hasn't seen a record low below 25 degrees F in the last 30 years. Or more, Wikipedia doesn't go back further than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley,_California#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley,_California#Climate So heat pumps should be OK for Berkeley.
- __sy__ 7y agoThat's actually correct, though you can also tune them for harsher local weather. I actually visited a heat-pump factory in Guangdong back in March. They make heat-pumps for residential projects in both freezing cold Harbin (Northern China) and hot as hell Guangdong (Southern China). Those are different SKUs that get tuned based on expected regional needs. The temp-vs-efficiency curves get all wacky but it still works. They also had a new product that combines two heat pumps: one for summer, one for winter.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
- pankajdoharey 7y agoWell the interesting thing to note here is, it is California and not Texas.
- hprotagonist 7y agoI have a strong preference for cooking on a gas stove. Otherwise, this seems fine.
- retrac98 7y agoCan't upvote this enough. People seem to think having an electric or induction hob is somehow superior to gas. Nah. Gas is by far the best thing to cook on.
- adrianN 7y agoYou cook the whole planet as a side effect though.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jrschumacher 7y agoFound this article interesting (have not fact checked): 568 kWh/an * 0,98356 kg de Co2 = 559 kg of Co2 / Year and per UK Familly cooking with electricity 534,3 kWh/an * 0,231023102 kg de Co2 = 123 kg Co2 / Year and per UK Familly cooking with natural gas 534,3 kWh/an * 0,260 kg de Co2 = 139 kg Co2 / Year and per UK Familly cooking with bottled gas https://www.solarcookingatlas.com/cooking-and-resources-gas-coal-electricity-wood.php https://www.solarcookingatlas.com/cooking-and-resources-gas-...
- icebraining 7y agoYou could probably get butane gas cylinders, no? If you only use them for cooking, even a smallish 13kg cylinder lasts a long time.
- icebraining 7y agoFunny I'm downvoted, is it such a weird idea? They're fairly popular around here, and it's what I use at home. Just plug 'em to the stove.
- mikorym 7y agoElectric heating can be a pain when compared to gas heating. Gas heating in Europe is rather efficient and I expect it to continue for a long time even as other energy uses are switched to renewables. In the comments someone mentioned that electricity in "East Bay Community Energy [gives the option of 100% renewable energy]". I would conclude that this is a move that is specifically useful and possible for Berkeley, but not necessarily for e.g. European countries at the moment.
- ZeroGravitas 7y agoI belive the Netherlands passed a similar law recently.
- maaaats 7y ago> Electric heating can be a pain when compared to gas heating How? I've never used gas, but electricity is plain simple. Just plug whatever in any outlet and turn it on, how is that a pain?
- reallydontask 7y agoThe pain is in the form of a far higher monthly bill. In the UK, gas is ~ £0.03 per kWh whereas electricity is ~ £0.13 kWh.
- andruby 7y agoAdditional data point for Belgium: €0.04 KWh for gas and €0.30 KWh for electricity. You'd need a COP of 7.5 in order for a heat-pump to be at cost parity of natural gas.
- ZeroGravitas 7y agoAnd yet, the Energy Saving Trust suggests that it can save 100 pounds a year even compared with a modern gas system, and much better against all other alternatives. I'm not sure if those numbers include government incentives but if they do then they're still a good proxy for the actual costs with a reasonable carbon tax included to internalize externalities.
- dingo_bat 7y agoHow would people cook though? I hate cooking on an induction stove, and electric heating element based stoves are much more expensive to run than gas stoves.
- bubblewrap 7y agoI thought gas was comparatively efficient, compared to other fossil fuels?
- adrianN 7y agoIt is, but we need to stop using fossil fuels in the next twenty years. Homes usually last longer than that and retrofitting heat pumps is quite expensive.
- PhantomGremlin 7y agoIt is, but we need to stop using fossil fuels in the next twenty years. That's easy to say, difficult to implement. E.g. China is cutting back on domestic use of coal, but has decided to build hundreds of new coal plants worldwide: https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/716347646/why-is-china-placing-a-global-bet-on-coal https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/716347646/why-is-china-placin... Also, there are other vast large-scale man-made ongoing changes to the world's ecosystem. E.g. the Amazon rainforest continues to be under attack. Same in other countries like Indonesia. One US city switching away from natural gas is totally insignificant compared to all that. If you really want to reduce climate change, figure out how to stop the big big crazy things. Banning natural gas in new construction in Berkeley is simply symbolism over substance.
- paranoidrobot 7y ago> One US city switching away from natural gas is totally insignificant compared to all that. Everything starts with one. If it turns out that Berkeley doesn't spontaneously erupt into rioting and general disorder because gas is being phased out, well perhaps others that were considering it will see that it's not such a crazy idea.
- adrianN 7y agoWe need every little bit we can get if we want to prevent disaster. Whataboutisms don't really help.
- ailideex 7y ago
- donatj 7y agoHonest question, how bad is natural gas actually carbon wise? I remember it being touted maybe 15 years ago about how great it was compared to gasoline and being a renewable resource. If I recall some national parks vehicles and bus lines [1] were moving to it. [1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy00osti/28377.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy00osti/28377.pdf
- simonh 7y agoIt releases about 15% less CO2 than gasoline, so it's a bit better. It does produce fewer particulates and combusts more completely, so there are fewer other byproducts such as CO and NOx.
- Gibbon1 7y agoAs far as CO2 I think it's half as bad as coal. Propbably 10 times worse than solar, wind, nuclear or hydro[1]. As the other responder says it causes less air pollution than gasoline and diesel. [1] Heard complaints that dams -> organic rich sediment -> bacteria -> methane -> global warming. I have no good feel for this argument though.
- skybrian 7y agoNote that California's net-zero energy mandate for new construction also starts in 2020 [1]. However, I'm not sure what that means (my web searches didn't find much). My guess any new construction will need to be very well insulated, and in most of California's climate, won't require much heating? I don't see how this would work in colder places like Lake Tahoe, though. [1] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/ZNE/ https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/ZNE/
- semi-extrinsic 7y agoPeople have built a net-positive energy house in the middle of Norway. It's mainly a matter of very good insulation, heat exchangers between outgoing and incoming air, heat pumps, and rooftop solar. In most of these buildings the windows can't even be opened, all air flow is controlled by the central system. https://snohetta.com/project/60-powerhouse-at-brattorkaia https://snohetta.com/project/60-powerhouse-at-brattorkaia
- RickJWagner 7y agoIn some ways, Berkeley seems like a great place to live. In others, a nightmare. I'm glad they do these things, though. It's interesting and informative to see what happens over time.
- fastbmk 7y agoA lot of countries with dictatorship regimes are natural gas exporters. Avoiding natural gas usage makes the world a better place. So that's a right decision.