4 ms·

San Francisco Bans Natural Gas for All New Construction

11 points by eyberg 6y ago

thursday0987 6y ago
i'm so glad I don't live in san francisco. Every time i read about these types of edicts, it just blows my mind. How long until they ban the sale of meat? methane from livestock is the 3rd largest producer of greenhouse gases.
- mint2 6y ago
  I’m sure people rued coal and wood stoves being sidelined too. I know they did with incandescent lightbulbs. It’s always easy to misjudge what one is unfamiliar with. Have you personally tried a home that used induction stoves and heat pumps for water and house heating? Not only that, is global warming suddenly not an issue because it might inconvenience people who are reticent to try new things? Putting gas in a new construction means those emissions are essentially locked in for several decades. We don’t have that time. Don’t hate on something that one hasn’t tried.
d33lio 6y ago
This makes no sense, other than maybe for preventing fires during earthquakes or creating a disincentive for developers to lobby the proliferation or expansion of existing gas lines? Otherwise, not using natural gas for heating hot water, cooking or heating homes is moronic since it's one of the most energy efficient means of doing so. Electric stoves and water heaters are hilariously inefficient and still pale in comparison to electric furnaces. As an environmental measure this is almost as dumb as Dubai deciding to use monumentally sized heat pumps to chill their beaches... But seriously, this will just result in orders of magnitude of more electricity usage and waste. Thank goodness I will never live in SF.
- mahkeiro 6y ago
  What exactly is your point? Induction stove are way more efficient than gas stove, heat pump are more efficient than gas furnace... However I think that banning all natural gas is not tge best way as natural gas can be CO2 neutral (like biogaz etc.)
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    Forgetting co2 for a minute... If you include the losses in the power station and the transmission lines then it's really not that much better to use the gas in the kitchen than to send it to a power station then send the power to the kitchen etc...
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      California gets a non insignificant amount of power from renewables (10-11GW peak solar generation during the day, per CAISO and electricitymap.org). Natural gas emits CO2 regardless of where it’s burned. Just as an EV displaces combustion vehicles, induction stoves displace combustion stoves. As the grid gets cleaner, everything else that uses it gets cleaner. In Australia, commercial buildings can no longer receive the highest sustainability score if they have natural gas service. These regulations are just the beginning of a path to ending residential and commercial natural gas consumption and its distribution network (which leaks non insignificant amounts of methane).
      - LatteLazy 6y ago
        That's fine, except that cali currently o ly gets about a third of its power from renewables. Once that number is higher you could turn gas off, but banning its use now actually increases emissions. It also ignores the fact that some household appliances currently cannot be replaced with electrical models. Notably boilers: there is no way you can replace a simple and efficient combi boiler with an electrical model of the same output on a residential circuit, the equipment is too big and the electrical load is huge. And that's without addressing the fact that we have basically decided NOT to cut our emissions and so doing any of this for Co2E reasons is a waste of time...
        toomuchtodo 6y ago
        Are you referring to an hvac boiler for heat? That can be replaced with efficient air source heat pump. Have a link to one of these example combi boilers?
pasttense01 6y ago
"The ordinance would affect the planned development of more than 54,000 homes and 32 million square feet of commercial space" I find the planned development of more than 54,000 homes very surprising: I thought San Francisco was basically all built up along with an anti-growth attitude in San Francisco. [Commercial space is not surprising with new skyscrapers...]
- grandmczeb 6y ago
  54,000 includes projects at all stages of the pipeline, including ones that are basically proposals. The average net increase over the last 10 years was about 2,800 per year, or roughly 0.7% increase in total housing stock per year. Source: https://default.sfplanning.org/publications_reports/2019_Housing_Inventory.pdf https://default.sfplanning.org/publications_reports/2019_Hou...
fuzzfactor 6y ago
This could have an unintended consequence where the gas ends up being flared instead, or worse released as unburned methane.

11 points by eyberg 6y ago

i'm so glad I don't live in san francisco. Every time i read about these types of edicts, it just blows my mind. How long until they ban the sale of meat? methane from livestock is the 3rd largest producer of greenhouse gases.

mint2 6y ago
I’m sure people rued coal and wood stoves being sidelined too. I know they did with incandescent lightbulbs. It’s always easy to misjudge what one is unfamiliar with. Have you personally tried a home that used induction stoves and heat pumps for water and house heating? Not only that, is global warming suddenly not an issue because it might inconvenience people who are reticent to try new things? Putting gas in a new construction means those emissions are essentially locked in for several decades. We don’t have that time. Don’t hate on something that one hasn’t tried.

d33lio 6y ago

This makes no sense, other than maybe for preventing fires during earthquakes or creating a disincentive for developers to lobby the proliferation or expansion of existing gas lines? Otherwise, not using natural gas for heating hot water, cooking or heating homes is moronic since it's one of the most energy efficient means of doing so. Electric stoves and water heaters are hilariously inefficient and still pale in comparison to electric furnaces. As an environmental measure this is almost as dumb as Dubai deciding to use monumentally sized heat pumps to chill their beaches... But seriously, this will just result in orders of magnitude of more electricity usage and waste. Thank goodness I will never live in SF.

mahkeiro 6y ago
What exactly is your point? Induction stove are way more efficient than gas stove, heat pump are more efficient than gas furnace... However I think that banning all natural gas is not tge best way as natural gas can be CO2 neutral (like biogaz etc.)
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  Forgetting co2 for a minute... If you include the losses in the power station and the transmission lines then it's really not that much better to use the gas in the kitchen than to send it to a power station then send the power to the kitchen etc...
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    California gets a non insignificant amount of power from renewables (10-11GW peak solar generation during the day, per CAISO and electricitymap.org). Natural gas emits CO2 regardless of where it’s burned. Just as an EV displaces combustion vehicles, induction stoves displace combustion stoves. As the grid gets cleaner, everything else that uses it gets cleaner. In Australia, commercial buildings can no longer receive the highest sustainability score if they have natural gas service. These regulations are just the beginning of a path to ending residential and commercial natural gas consumption and its distribution network (which leaks non insignificant amounts of methane).
    - LatteLazy 6y ago
      That's fine, except that cali currently o ly gets about a third of its power from renewables. Once that number is higher you could turn gas off, but banning its use now actually increases emissions. It also ignores the fact that some household appliances currently cannot be replaced with electrical models. Notably boilers: there is no way you can replace a simple and efficient combi boiler with an electrical model of the same output on a residential circuit, the equipment is too big and the electrical load is huge. And that's without addressing the fact that we have basically decided NOT to cut our emissions and so doing any of this for Co2E reasons is a waste of time...
      - toomuchtodo 6y ago
        Are you referring to an hvac boiler for heat? That can be replaced with efficient air source heat pump. Have a link to one of these example combi boilers?

pasttense01 6y ago

"The ordinance would affect the planned development of more than 54,000 homes and 32 million square feet of commercial space" I find the planned development of more than 54,000 homes very surprising: I thought San Francisco was basically all built up along with an anti-growth attitude in San Francisco. [Commercial space is not surprising with new skyscrapers...]

grandmczeb 6y ago
54,000 includes projects at all stages of the pipeline, including ones that are basically proposals. The average net increase over the last 10 years was about 2,800 per year, or roughly 0.7% increase in total housing stock per year. Source: https://default.sfplanning.org/publications_reports/2019_Housing_Inventory.pdf https://default.sfplanning.org/publications_reports/2019_Hou...

fuzzfactor 6y ago

This could have an unintended consequence where the gas ends up being flared instead, or worse released as unburned methane.