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This article was Sponsored by WhatTheFrack Drilling Company. Fracking/Natural Gas follows the same playbook as big Tobacco, they hire experts and sponsor all k

This article was Sponsored by WhatTheFrack Drilling Company. Fracking/Natural Gas follows the same playbook as big Tobacco, they hire experts and sponsor all kinds of studies that align with what they want people to believe. The main cost here seems to be the energy monopolies, not the method of heating.

hijinks 3y ago
ya electric baseboard are expensive to tun heatpumps are really cheap to run
- qwytw 3y ago
  > heatpumps are really cheap to run But still more expensive than gas in most areas? Unless you get a ground pump etc. which has a much higher upfront cost.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    As a nonamerican, I'm not sure how to read "most places" here. Do you mean most places in the USA or actually most places in the world?
  - hijinks 3y ago
    i would say if you have a gas HVAC there is little point in replacing unless you also have a lot of solar on the roof and sending a lot back to the grid. If I was building a new home today and in an area that might get down to 10-15F as a low i'd 100% do heat pumps. The nice part about heat pumps for me is that they might get to temp and run at 10% all day long and keep the heat right at 71. Where a gas will turn on at 69 and heat till 73 and continue that cold/hot cycle being cheaper also depends on current utility rates also
  - throw0101b 3y ago
    > But still more expensive than gas in most areas? Using numbers from the non-profit Efficiency Maine, with natural/methane gas at $2.561 per CCF (therm), and electricity at $0.1595 per kWh, standard efficiency heat pumps have better $/MMBtu down to about 0F/-18C, and high performance HPs down to about -10F/-25C, per this presentation: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcwIz6heDss&t=39m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcwIz6heDss&t=39m30s You'll have to do the math with your local prices. The same channel also has a presentation on dual fuel / hybrid setups: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_9P3Dn7is0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_9P3Dn7is0 Generally: if you're buying new HVAC+D equipment for your home, you might as well buy a heat pump instead of a 'simple' AC unit, and there are heat pumps that can work down below freezing quite well (which is probably good enough for most of the US population, except in the coldest locations).
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      And if you're building a new subdivision or apartment block, you can skip the entire gas system connection. Safer and cheaper. Places off the current gas grid are also low hanging fruit generally.
PumpkinSpice 3y ago
It's literally the playbook of every single business. Database vendors and graphics card manufacturers tout studies that show their product performs better. Pharmaceutical companies pay researchers who conduct studies that show their stuff works. If Safeway wants a zoning variance to open a new store, they will pay for an environmental impact study that says it's fine. I'm not saying this to convince you should trust this study. But I think it's important to recognize it's absolutely happening everywhere, not just in the industries we don't like. Most of the research we read was paid for, and an overwhelming majority of it reaches the conclusion that aligns with the views of the researchers or of whoever is footing the bill.
alex_young 3y ago
This article was Sponsored by WhatTheFrack Drilling Company. Where did you see that? I don’t see the reference anywhere. Edit: feel free to downvote. I’m not defending the content, I just thought it was interesting. Maybe we should tax fuel oil or something. I just don’t see this report as being some shadowy conspiracy with an oil company.
- repeekad 3y ago
  Downvoted because people don’t like the question? I would also like to know, apparently others don’t
  - Aachen 3y ago
    Same question here. I can't find the reference either. The author is also not labeled as a third party or anything, the word frack doesn't occur on the page, and the word sponsored doesn't appear in the article. I guess people upvote the top-level comment because it sounds so plausible? But in reality it was meant as a joke and people (like me) were taking it literally?
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  It was written in part (I suspect in large part) by Robert Bryce [1], an oil and gas industry apologist, who has - if nothing else - been consistently arguing against renewable energy and for oil and gas interests for 30 years. He's been funded by and a fellow with the Institute for Energy Research [2], a front group for Exxon Mobil, Enron, and Charles Koch, and with the Manhattan Institute [3], a corporate-funded conservative think tank, also funded largely by the petroleum industry. The title of the article and main thrust is that if you use electric resistive space heaters and baseboards, it will cost more than gas. Everyone knows that. No one is seriously steel-man arguing for electric resistive heating (anymore), only heat pumps. I'm shocked it's only a mere 77% more, I would have assumed 2x or 3x. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bryce_(writer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bryce_(writer) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy_Research#Energy_and_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy...
BeetleB 3y ago
Disagree. I see the same thing where I live. Natural gas heating is much cheaper than electric. And we have one of the lowest electric rates in the country. Gas heating was also cheaper when I lived in the Midwest. In fact, I often feel the opposite of you - that Big Electric is pushing propaganda. I often see people switching to heat pumps "because it's more efficient", but they don't see their bills go down, and on top of that it's a lot more expensive to install. Even if the bills go down a little, they'll probably not make up for the added cost of equipment in the whole time they are in that house.
- tootie 3y ago
  "much cheaper" I can believe it has a lower price, but I'm sure the cost is higher.
  - BeetleB 3y ago
    Not in the least. With baseboard heating, the cost to heat my 1 bedroom apartment was on par with heating a 4 bedroom house (with gas). With a heat pump, at best it will be comparable.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      Comment you're replying to was noting the difference between price-to-consumer and cost-to-planet.
    - qwebfdzsh 3y ago
      > With a heat pump, at best it will be comparable. Would it? e.g. according to https://c03.apogee.net/mvc/home/hes/land/el?utilityname=ure&spc=hcc https://c03.apogee.net/mvc/home/hes/land/el?utilityname=ure&... unless you live in area with extremely expensive gas and very cheap electricity it will always be cheaper.
      - BeetleB 3y ago
        Thanks. Went to my gas and electric bills to look up the rates. Plugged in the numbers on the site. Heat pump estimated to cost me $400 extra per year for heating. If I were doing a brand new build, it may make some sense just because I like to be "green". But paying several thousand just for the install, only to end up paying more per year: Just doesn't make sense.
WillPostForFood 3y ago
Here is the original report, no fracking sponsorship. The data in the article is accurate. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/WinterFuels.php#tab1 https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/WinterFuels.php#tab...
- Aachen 3y ago
  From near the table you linked to: > the expenditures included for households that heat primarily with electricity in this report would also include electricity used for appliances and lighting That's not a fair comparison (gaslighting?) unless you use gas lighting, a gas dishwasher, and a gas freezer! It also doesn't mention what heat pump efficiency is assumed, it just compares electricity "as a fuel" to other fuels, which means resistive heating. Wholly unrealistic for places that need any serious amount of heating per year. (I was surprised to learn that a colleague in South Africa was cold and couldn't turn on the heater during their winter because they don't have heating installed! A 10€ space heater and some blankets is all they need for heat around there apparently. There, resistive heating makes sense as compared to an expensive heat pump system.)
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    The amount of electricity used by appliances and lighting is negligible compared to that used by the air conditioner compressor. Even the air conditioning fan is hardly more than a few light bulbs. So while it's good that the report quibbled, they might have gone to the effort to quantify their equivalent at least to an order of magnitude.
toomuchtodo 3y ago
PR is all that is left when government is leaning into the destruction of your business and its harmful externalities (heat pump subsidies). Electric resistive heat is inefficient, heat pumps are not.
- archontes 3y ago
  They also don't function well below 40°F/4°C
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    Weird. Mine (Mitsubishi Hyperheat) have a COP above 1 down to -15F, and I've seen them work just fine at 5F (New Mexico, 6000', winter nights). Check your data.
    - mindslight 3y ago
      COP "above 1" is nothing to brag about. I'd say that a COP of around 2 should be the minimum at which a heat pump is considered "working". Otherwise this propaganda seemingly based around the cost of resistive heating actually becomes relevant. (I've no idea of the exact current state of the art though).
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        COP == 1 is the point at which a heat pump becomes a resistive heater. As COP drops below 1, a heat pump becomes more and more like an actual resistive heater. Nobody is bragging about COP == 1 ... it's just a reference point at which the benefit of a heat pump goes away and it becomes ... just an inefficient heater.
        mindslight 3y ago
        I just think this whole topic gets derailed in many ways by the lure of comparing things to resistive heating (eg the original article), and using parity with resistive heating as a reference point for practical heat pump source temperatures is an instance of this. The benefit from a heat pump has left long before COP = 1. I'd say a COP of 3ish (modern modcon boiler efficiency divided by common gas power plant efficiency) is a straightforward honest appraisal of where a heat pump starts to be less than ideal. Of course I recognize low temperatures are merely one small portion of the time. Residential heat pump system design has generally taken advantage of this by having backup resistive coils. It would be much more efficient to fall back to a gas furnace, but for the capital cost. So an actual comparison necessarily takes into account expected temperatures over the day and the heating season, likely nighttime setback, thermal mass, etc. Which certainly isn't easy to button up into a simple comparison, but the point is resistive heating is a red herring!
superduty 3y ago
False.
Nifty3929 3y ago
This is a good reason to be extra skeptical, but is not itself much of an argument. Is there any evidence their analysis is materially wrong?
lxgr 3y ago
Where are you seeing this? Right there in the article, it says that a heat pump would be around the same price as gas!
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  It kinda makes sense. You can burn natural gas to make electricity. You get 0.4 energy units of electricity for each energy unit of natural gas. Heat pump COP is say 3.5. So you get 1.4 units of heating out. Converting to electricity has costs that eat away at that 1.4 units. Call it a wash. The big differences are the electric grid can be powered by zero carbon sources. And burning natural gas is a local pollutant. And if you ditch gas you don't need to maintain commercial and residential gas infrastructure.
throwawa14223 3y ago
A search seems to indicate there is not a drilling company named "WhatTheFrack".
- Aachen 3y ago
  I think that was part of OP's joke. I took the test of the post at face value though and feel mislead... This should not be the top comment
ulizzle 3y ago
You gotta have proof before saying that. Otherwise it sounds like lefty bleeding heart conspiracy theories that turn out to have some sort of evil agenda
fuzzfactor 3y ago
This "77%" is nothing new, just the latest, most up-to-date price quote on their terms. IMHO the real percentage is more like 200% more. It was this way even before the price of energy skyrocketed in the early 1970's. People in their all-electric homes didn't care about the cost multiple when it was only a few dollars difference every month. The underlying physics are hard to argue against, it simply takes about 3 times as much natural gas to generate the electricity to heat one home, compared to using gas heat burned directly for the same amount of indoor heating. So you pay about 3 times as much for the same amount of electric heat as you do gas and that ratio has been holding steady for many decades. I also expect the differential to be maintained even after power plants are further decoupled from natural gas fuel supplies themselves.

hijinks 3y ago

ya electric baseboard are expensive to tun heatpumps are really cheap to run

qwytw 3y ago
> heatpumps are really cheap to run But still more expensive than gas in most areas? Unless you get a ground pump etc. which has a much higher upfront cost.
- Aachen 3y ago
  As a nonamerican, I'm not sure how to read "most places" here. Do you mean most places in the USA or actually most places in the world?
- hijinks 3y ago
  i would say if you have a gas HVAC there is little point in replacing unless you also have a lot of solar on the roof and sending a lot back to the grid. If I was building a new home today and in an area that might get down to 10-15F as a low i'd 100% do heat pumps. The nice part about heat pumps for me is that they might get to temp and run at 10% all day long and keep the heat right at 71. Where a gas will turn on at 69 and heat till 73 and continue that cold/hot cycle being cheaper also depends on current utility rates also
- throw0101b 3y ago
  > But still more expensive than gas in most areas? Using numbers from the non-profit Efficiency Maine, with natural/methane gas at $2.561 per CCF (therm), and electricity at $0.1595 per kWh, standard efficiency heat pumps have better $/MMBtu down to about 0F/-18C, and high performance HPs down to about -10F/-25C, per this presentation: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcwIz6heDss&t=39m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcwIz6heDss&t=39m30s You'll have to do the math with your local prices. The same channel also has a presentation on dual fuel / hybrid setups: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_9P3Dn7is0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_9P3Dn7is0 Generally: if you're buying new HVAC+D equipment for your home, you might as well buy a heat pump instead of a 'simple' AC unit, and there are heat pumps that can work down below freezing quite well (which is probably good enough for most of the US population, except in the coldest locations).
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    And if you're building a new subdivision or apartment block, you can skip the entire gas system connection. Safer and cheaper. Places off the current gas grid are also low hanging fruit generally.

PumpkinSpice 3y ago

It's literally the playbook of every single business. Database vendors and graphics card manufacturers tout studies that show their product performs better. Pharmaceutical companies pay researchers who conduct studies that show their stuff works. If Safeway wants a zoning variance to open a new store, they will pay for an environmental impact study that says it's fine. I'm not saying this to convince you should trust this study. But I think it's important to recognize it's absolutely happening everywhere, not just in the industries we don't like. Most of the research we read was paid for, and an overwhelming majority of it reaches the conclusion that aligns with the views of the researchers or of whoever is footing the bill.

alex_young 3y ago

This article was Sponsored by WhatTheFrack Drilling Company. Where did you see that? I don’t see the reference anywhere. Edit: feel free to downvote. I’m not defending the content, I just thought it was interesting. Maybe we should tax fuel oil or something. I just don’t see this report as being some shadowy conspiracy with an oil company.

repeekad 3y ago
Downvoted because people don’t like the question? I would also like to know, apparently others don’t
- Aachen 3y ago
  Same question here. I can't find the reference either. The author is also not labeled as a third party or anything, the word frack doesn't occur on the page, and the word sponsored doesn't appear in the article. I guess people upvote the top-level comment because it sounds so plausible? But in reality it was meant as a joke and people (like me) were taking it literally?
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
It was written in part (I suspect in large part) by Robert Bryce [1], an oil and gas industry apologist, who has - if nothing else - been consistently arguing against renewable energy and for oil and gas interests for 30 years. He's been funded by and a fellow with the Institute for Energy Research [2], a front group for Exxon Mobil, Enron, and Charles Koch, and with the Manhattan Institute [3], a corporate-funded conservative think tank, also funded largely by the petroleum industry. The title of the article and main thrust is that if you use electric resistive space heaters and baseboards, it will cost more than gas. Everyone knows that. No one is seriously steel-man arguing for electric resistive heating (anymore), only heat pumps. I'm shocked it's only a mere 77% more, I would have assumed 2x or 3x. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bryce_(writer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bryce_(writer) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy_Research#Energy_and_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy...

BeetleB 3y ago

Disagree. I see the same thing where I live. Natural gas heating is much cheaper than electric. And we have one of the lowest electric rates in the country. Gas heating was also cheaper when I lived in the Midwest. In fact, I often feel the opposite of you - that Big Electric is pushing propaganda. I often see people switching to heat pumps "because it's more efficient", but they don't see their bills go down, and on top of that it's a lot more expensive to install. Even if the bills go down a little, they'll probably not make up for the added cost of equipment in the whole time they are in that house.

tootie 3y ago
"much cheaper" I can believe it has a lower price, but I'm sure the cost is higher.
- BeetleB 3y ago
  Not in the least. With baseboard heating, the cost to heat my 1 bedroom apartment was on par with heating a 4 bedroom house (with gas). With a heat pump, at best it will be comparable.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    Comment you're replying to was noting the difference between price-to-consumer and cost-to-planet.
  - qwebfdzsh 3y ago
    > With a heat pump, at best it will be comparable. Would it? e.g. according to https://c03.apogee.net/mvc/home/hes/land/el?utilityname=ure&spc=hcc https://c03.apogee.net/mvc/home/hes/land/el?utilityname=ure&... unless you live in area with extremely expensive gas and very cheap electricity it will always be cheaper.
    - BeetleB 3y ago
      Thanks. Went to my gas and electric bills to look up the rates. Plugged in the numbers on the site. Heat pump estimated to cost me $400 extra per year for heating. If I were doing a brand new build, it may make some sense just because I like to be "green". But paying several thousand just for the install, only to end up paying more per year: Just doesn't make sense.

WillPostForFood 3y ago

Here is the original report, no fracking sponsorship. The data in the article is accurate. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/WinterFuels.php#tab1 https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/WinterFuels.php#tab...

Aachen 3y ago
From near the table you linked to: > the expenditures included for households that heat primarily with electricity in this report would also include electricity used for appliances and lighting That's not a fair comparison (gaslighting?) unless you use gas lighting, a gas dishwasher, and a gas freezer! It also doesn't mention what heat pump efficiency is assumed, it just compares electricity "as a fuel" to other fuels, which means resistive heating. Wholly unrealistic for places that need any serious amount of heating per year. (I was surprised to learn that a colleague in South Africa was cold and couldn't turn on the heater during their winter because they don't have heating installed! A 10€ space heater and some blankets is all they need for heat around there apparently. There, resistive heating makes sense as compared to an expensive heat pump system.)
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  The amount of electricity used by appliances and lighting is negligible compared to that used by the air conditioner compressor. Even the air conditioning fan is hardly more than a few light bulbs. So while it's good that the report quibbled, they might have gone to the effort to quantify their equivalent at least to an order of magnitude.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

PR is all that is left when government is leaning into the destruction of your business and its harmful externalities (heat pump subsidies). Electric resistive heat is inefficient, heat pumps are not.

archontes 3y ago
They also don't function well below 40°F/4°C
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  Weird. Mine (Mitsubishi Hyperheat) have a COP above 1 down to -15F, and I've seen them work just fine at 5F (New Mexico, 6000', winter nights). Check your data.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    COP "above 1" is nothing to brag about. I'd say that a COP of around 2 should be the minimum at which a heat pump is considered "working". Otherwise this propaganda seemingly based around the cost of resistive heating actually becomes relevant. (I've no idea of the exact current state of the art though).
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      COP == 1 is the point at which a heat pump becomes a resistive heater. As COP drops below 1, a heat pump becomes more and more like an actual resistive heater. Nobody is bragging about COP == 1 ... it's just a reference point at which the benefit of a heat pump goes away and it becomes ... just an inefficient heater.
      - mindslight 3y ago
        I just think this whole topic gets derailed in many ways by the lure of comparing things to resistive heating (eg the original article), and using parity with resistive heating as a reference point for practical heat pump source temperatures is an instance of this. The benefit from a heat pump has left long before COP = 1. I'd say a COP of 3ish (modern modcon boiler efficiency divided by common gas power plant efficiency) is a straightforward honest appraisal of where a heat pump starts to be less than ideal. Of course I recognize low temperatures are merely one small portion of the time. Residential heat pump system design has generally taken advantage of this by having backup resistive coils. It would be much more efficient to fall back to a gas furnace, but for the capital cost. So an actual comparison necessarily takes into account expected temperatures over the day and the heating season, likely nighttime setback, thermal mass, etc. Which certainly isn't easy to button up into a simple comparison, but the point is resistive heating is a red herring!

superduty 3y ago

False.

Nifty3929 3y ago

This is a good reason to be extra skeptical, but is not itself much of an argument. Is there any evidence their analysis is materially wrong?

lxgr 3y ago

Where are you seeing this? Right there in the article, it says that a heat pump would be around the same price as gas!

Gibbon1 3y ago
It kinda makes sense. You can burn natural gas to make electricity. You get 0.4 energy units of electricity for each energy unit of natural gas. Heat pump COP is say 3.5. So you get 1.4 units of heating out. Converting to electricity has costs that eat away at that 1.4 units. Call it a wash. The big differences are the electric grid can be powered by zero carbon sources. And burning natural gas is a local pollutant. And if you ditch gas you don't need to maintain commercial and residential gas infrastructure.

throwawa14223 3y ago

A search seems to indicate there is not a drilling company named "WhatTheFrack".

Aachen 3y ago
I think that was part of OP's joke. I took the test of the post at face value though and feel mislead... This should not be the top comment

ulizzle 3y ago

You gotta have proof before saying that. Otherwise it sounds like lefty bleeding heart conspiracy theories that turn out to have some sort of evil agenda

fuzzfactor 3y ago

This "77%" is nothing new, just the latest, most up-to-date price quote on their terms. IMHO the real percentage is more like 200% more. It was this way even before the price of energy skyrocketed in the early 1970's. People in their all-electric homes didn't care about the cost multiple when it was only a few dollars difference every month. The underlying physics are hard to argue against, it simply takes about 3 times as much natural gas to generate the electricity to heat one home, compared to using gas heat burned directly for the same amount of indoor heating. So you pay about 3 times as much for the same amount of electric heat as you do gas and that ratio has been holding steady for many decades. I also expect the differential to be maintained even after power plants are further decoupled from natural gas fuel supplies themselves.