5 ms·

That seems incredibly short-sighted. Currently, using electricity for heating generates significantly more CO2 than natural gas and you can always switch to ele

by booi 7y ago

That 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 ago
  You 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 ago
    Think 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 ago
      The 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 ago
How would heating with electricity generate any CO2 if it were sourced from Solar or Wind?
- hprotagonist 7y ago
  It wouldn’t, but man do we still burn a lot of coal in the US for electric plants.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    Not in California. And California overproduces power by state law.
    - hprotagonist 7y ago
      https://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 ago
  Because you can not pin down the source of electricity that way. It's all mixed together.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Well 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 ago
You 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 ago
  It 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 ago
    Oh 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 ago
      AFAIK 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 ago
The 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.

by booi 7y ago

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 ago
You 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 ago
  Think 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 ago
    The 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 ago

How would heating with electricity generate any CO2 if it were sourced from Solar or Wind?

hprotagonist 7y ago
It wouldn’t, but man do we still burn a lot of coal in the US for electric plants.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Not in California. And California overproduces power by state law.
  - hprotagonist 7y ago
    https://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 ago
Because you can not pin down the source of electricity that way. It's all mixed together.
mehrdadn 7y ago
Well 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 ago

You 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 ago
It 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 ago
  Oh 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 ago
    AFAIK 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 ago

The 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.