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"New buildings in the biggest U.S. city with 8.8 million residents will have to use electricity for heat and cooking" Hmm, I wonder where the electricity comes

by lbrito 5y ago

"New buildings in the biggest U.S. city with 8.8 million residents will have to use electricity for heat and cooking" Hmm, I wonder where the electricity comes from. If it comes from natural gas as well, then they're just adding another step of energy transformation, which is aka more inefficiency, right? Or worse, maybe some of the electricity comes from dirtier sources than natural gas.

jkaplowitz 5y ago
They're being smarter than that. The city also signed an electricity supply agreement with Hydro Québec, which is supposed to be operational before the ban on natural gas in new buildings comes into effect. [Minor correction: some smaller new buildings may have the ban in effect for 2 years before the new electricity becomes operational.] Hydro Québec is, as the name suggests, hydroelectricity and therefore cleaner and more sustainable/renewable than natural gas.
dml2135 5y ago
No, even if power plants are still run by fossil fuels, the electrification of the home leads to greater efficiency due to the economies of scale that centralizing the power production provides. Also, once everything is electrified, it’s easy to switch out the source of that electricity to something cleaner, at any time. Whereas people purchasing new gas appliances now will keep them in service for the next 10-20 years.
- usrusr 5y ago
  My immediate reaction was the exact opposite, because replacing natural gas with manufactured gas would be comparatively easy. You can even push plain H2 into the mix as long as the fraction is within a certain range. A gas network can serve as a considerable sink for non-dispatchable renewables to not go to waste. But it's the same (or better!) for centralized natgas plants, so that's clearly better, at least as long as there are no cheap compromises taken to go electric (like installing cheap resistive heating, which is actually a thing here in Germany, where an entire industry pretends that we'd be fine in cold air as long as there's some IR emitter pointed at our body)

by lbrito 5y ago

jkaplowitz 5y ago

They're being smarter than that. The city also signed an electricity supply agreement with Hydro Québec, which is supposed to be operational before the ban on natural gas in new buildings comes into effect. [Minor correction: some smaller new buildings may have the ban in effect for 2 years before the new electricity becomes operational.] Hydro Québec is, as the name suggests, hydroelectricity and therefore cleaner and more sustainable/renewable than natural gas.

dml2135 5y ago

No, even if power plants are still run by fossil fuels, the electrification of the home leads to greater efficiency due to the economies of scale that centralizing the power production provides. Also, once everything is electrified, it’s easy to switch out the source of that electricity to something cleaner, at any time. Whereas people purchasing new gas appliances now will keep them in service for the next 10-20 years.

usrusr 5y ago
My immediate reaction was the exact opposite, because replacing natural gas with manufactured gas would be comparatively easy. You can even push plain H2 into the mix as long as the fraction is within a certain range. A gas network can serve as a considerable sink for non-dispatchable renewables to not go to waste. But it's the same (or better!) for centralized natgas plants, so that's clearly better, at least as long as there are no cheap compromises taken to go electric (like installing cheap resistive heating, which is actually a thing here in Germany, where an entire industry pretends that we'd be fine in cold air as long as there's some IR emitter pointed at our body)