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Gas from the ground can never be clean. Electricity can. That’s why electrification is key to getting where we want to get. We need to both electrify and get el

by arrrg 3y ago

Gas from the ground can never be clean. Electricity can. That’s why electrification is key to getting where we want to get. We need to both electrify and get electricity generation carbon emissions to zero. Also: electrification additionally offers efficiency gains in many places. Heat pumps and EVs, for example, are both (in general) more efficient than gas stoves and ICE cars.

mindslight 3y ago
> electrification additionally offers efficiency gains in many places. Heat pumps and EVs, for example, are both (in general) more efficient than gas stoves and ICE cars This is the kind of comment that makes the "electrification movement" look bad. You can't use a heat pump for a stove - the very high delta-T means maximum efficiency (COP) approaches 1, and you might as well use resistive. And generating cooking heat by burning gas at the point of use is certainly more efficient. Perhaps you meant to say that generating electricity from gas to run heat pumps is more efficient than gas boilers/furnaces for heat. From my vague recollection this is questionable, but it's at least close. The real argument is forward looking, especially with EV's intrinsic storage being able to utilize intermittent sources. "Gas stoves" has only entered the zeitgeist due to the culture war tempest in a teapot from New York phasing out municipal gas. Which is another ignorant overreach by the state - they should have focused on the collective problem of gas leaking from distribution pipes, and allowed for propane tanks at new single family homes that really want a gas stove. That would have preempted 90% of the valid criticism.
- danhor 3y ago
  I'm guessing the original commenter was confused between heating with gas and cooking. Using electricity for cooking is much more efficient when using induction heating (which is the only kind of electric cooking anyone should use). Cooking with gas might be very efficient in converting gas to heat, but more than half of the heat gets lost without heating the pot/food and escapes by the side (approx. 40%), so using induction is about twice as efficient as using a gas stove (and conventional electric stoves aren't much worse). With the typical efficiency of a combined cycle gas plant, this cancels out to be approx. the same but gets better when more renewables are used (and, of course, worse with coal). Gas stoves still do have a lot of other valid issues and I am kind of amazed a culture war broke out over it (when e.g. in germany less than 10% of households use gas stoves without a massive demand for new gas stoves). > and allowed for propane tanks at new single family homes that really want a gas stove As far as I can tell from the reporting [1] this is stopping new gas hookups (maybe including the equipment at the time of construction?) but there seems to be at least nothing stopping you from adding a gas stove and powering it from propane. I was unfortunately unable to find the text in the bill (or the exact bill), but as far as I can tell nothing suggests otherwise and if that is the case: > That would have preempted 90% of the valid criticism. That doesn't seem to have happened [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-state-bans-natural-gas-some-new-construction-2023-05-03/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-state-bans-natural...
  - mindslight 3y ago
    Point taken about heat getting into food versus going up the side of the pot, but the break even still ties into my point that the real gains are still forward-looking rather than immediate. > I am kind of amazed a culture war broke out over [gas stoves] Hah. I am very not surprised. A seemingly-harmless everyday item in people's homes that the "big government" is "taking away"? There's certainly valid top-down arguments about the indoor air quality in the inefficient rental market, but they don't apply to single family homes (in the US paradigm it's fundamentally a personal choice). > I was unfortunately unable to find the text in the bill (or the exact bill) Same here, which is doubly unfortunate with all of these more-heat-than-light topics where the "news" articles drown out the primary sources. Some of my digging did indicate that propane was included, but it's hard to know if that was just a hallucination (in the large language model sense, regardless of whether the articles were written by silicon LLMs). I know personally if I just had to have a gas stove in new construction, I'd get a few 20 pound propane tanks and plumb it myself. I actually considered doing this if I wanted a gas stove (versus paying a monthly fee for municipal gas), but ultimately decided against gas because the less flammable stuff in the house the better (moving appliances with those flex lines always gives me the willies as I think about metal fatigue). But solving your own problems isn't really relevant in the culture war...
- arrrg 3y ago
  That was just a vocabulary issue, sorry. I’m not a native speaker. I meant heating with gas vs. heat pump, obviously not cooking with a heat pump, that‘s absurd.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    That had not occurred to me because the rest of your comment was so clear. "Boilers" and "furnaces" refer to heating, and "stoves" generally refer to cooking. Exception: "wood stoves" are generally used for heating (indoor cooking with wood isn't common any more).
nonethewiser 3y ago
No, electricity can’t be clean nor dirty. It can be generated cleanly. But it does not follow that it IS generated cleanly because it CAN BE generated cleanly. Thats all I'm saying. If you drive an electric car and you know the energy mix that generated the electricity then maybe you can conclude its cleaner (although that’s not the only factor). If you dont, then you are definitely just guessing.

by arrrg 3y ago

mindslight 3y ago

> electrification additionally offers efficiency gains in many places. Heat pumps and EVs, for example, are both (in general) more efficient than gas stoves and ICE cars This is the kind of comment that makes the "electrification movement" look bad. You can't use a heat pump for a stove - the very high delta-T means maximum efficiency (COP) approaches 1, and you might as well use resistive. And generating cooking heat by burning gas at the point of use is certainly more efficient. Perhaps you meant to say that generating electricity from gas to run heat pumps is more efficient than gas boilers/furnaces for heat. From my vague recollection this is questionable, but it's at least close. The real argument is forward looking, especially with EV's intrinsic storage being able to utilize intermittent sources. "Gas stoves" has only entered the zeitgeist due to the culture war tempest in a teapot from New York phasing out municipal gas. Which is another ignorant overreach by the state - they should have focused on the collective problem of gas leaking from distribution pipes, and allowed for propane tanks at new single family homes that really want a gas stove. That would have preempted 90% of the valid criticism.

danhor 3y ago
I'm guessing the original commenter was confused between heating with gas and cooking. Using electricity for cooking is much more efficient when using induction heating (which is the only kind of electric cooking anyone should use). Cooking with gas might be very efficient in converting gas to heat, but more than half of the heat gets lost without heating the pot/food and escapes by the side (approx. 40%), so using induction is about twice as efficient as using a gas stove (and conventional electric stoves aren't much worse). With the typical efficiency of a combined cycle gas plant, this cancels out to be approx. the same but gets better when more renewables are used (and, of course, worse with coal). Gas stoves still do have a lot of other valid issues and I am kind of amazed a culture war broke out over it (when e.g. in germany less than 10% of households use gas stoves without a massive demand for new gas stoves). > and allowed for propane tanks at new single family homes that really want a gas stove As far as I can tell from the reporting [1] this is stopping new gas hookups (maybe including the equipment at the time of construction?) but there seems to be at least nothing stopping you from adding a gas stove and powering it from propane. I was unfortunately unable to find the text in the bill (or the exact bill), but as far as I can tell nothing suggests otherwise and if that is the case: > That would have preempted 90% of the valid criticism. That doesn't seem to have happened [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-state-bans-natural-gas-some-new-construction-2023-05-03/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-state-bans-natural...
- mindslight 3y ago
  Point taken about heat getting into food versus going up the side of the pot, but the break even still ties into my point that the real gains are still forward-looking rather than immediate. > I am kind of amazed a culture war broke out over [gas stoves] Hah. I am very not surprised. A seemingly-harmless everyday item in people's homes that the "big government" is "taking away"? There's certainly valid top-down arguments about the indoor air quality in the inefficient rental market, but they don't apply to single family homes (in the US paradigm it's fundamentally a personal choice). > I was unfortunately unable to find the text in the bill (or the exact bill) Same here, which is doubly unfortunate with all of these more-heat-than-light topics where the "news" articles drown out the primary sources. Some of my digging did indicate that propane was included, but it's hard to know if that was just a hallucination (in the large language model sense, regardless of whether the articles were written by silicon LLMs). I know personally if I just had to have a gas stove in new construction, I'd get a few 20 pound propane tanks and plumb it myself. I actually considered doing this if I wanted a gas stove (versus paying a monthly fee for municipal gas), but ultimately decided against gas because the less flammable stuff in the house the better (moving appliances with those flex lines always gives me the willies as I think about metal fatigue). But solving your own problems isn't really relevant in the culture war...
arrrg 3y ago
That was just a vocabulary issue, sorry. I’m not a native speaker. I meant heating with gas vs. heat pump, obviously not cooking with a heat pump, that‘s absurd.
- mindslight 3y ago
  That had not occurred to me because the rest of your comment was so clear. "Boilers" and "furnaces" refer to heating, and "stoves" generally refer to cooking. Exception: "wood stoves" are generally used for heating (indoor cooking with wood isn't common any more).

nonethewiser 3y ago

No, electricity can’t be clean nor dirty. It can be generated cleanly. But it does not follow that it IS generated cleanly because it CAN BE generated cleanly. Thats all I'm saying. If you drive an electric car and you know the energy mix that generated the electricity then maybe you can conclude its cleaner (although that’s not the only factor). If you dont, then you are definitely just guessing.