I've used electric appliances all my life, so I personally wouldn't be upset at not having gas. However, California has had a particularly bad track record of reliable electricity delivery.
I'm not sure how to answer this. I grew up in a place where natural gas wasn't commonly used. There was no gas utility to pipe it to your home, so you'd have to buy your own tank. Virtually no one did this, so we relied on electric for everything.
This is stupid. Burning gas on-site for heat is far more efficient than burning something far away, turning it into electricity at max 60% efficiency (usually more like 30-40%), transmitting it through the grid, and then putting it through a resistance heater.
If all or even most of that electricity were renewable or nuclear you'd have an advantage in terms of CO2 there, but it's not. Renewable can peak out at >50% of power during the day, but it's also important to note that heat and cooking needs usually peak at night. It's out of phase with renewable supply.
Politicians can set the what, but never ever let them specify how. They are not qualified. Set a CO2 target and let actual engineers figure it out.
Environmentally it's better to burn the gas for heat, and send the electricity back on the grid and offset some other usage of electricity with your solar cells.
Both CO2 and energy usage are global things, not local. There is no such thing as saying "my heat is sourced from solar power".
Is it actually better in a CO2-emissions sense to use a 90% efficiency natural gas furnace, or to use a 300-400% efficiency heat pump running off a grid that is 2/3rds (on average) powered by renewable sources? Not making a statement or asking for a guess: asking if anyone has done the math on this.
Even better is to use an absorption heat pump powered by natural gas. You can also use this for cooling. This type of heat pump emits even less than an electric one.
Getting rid of natural gas is environmentally foolish, at least until we reach the fairy tale world where nothing is burned for energy.
Today though? This idea of "no natural gas", harms the environment.
I have a single family house in bay area out of any shade. I installed as much solar as I could and the best panels I could find 2 years ago.
We heat and cook with gas. So solar goes to appliances, tech, and AC (few days in summer) and one Nissan leaf. It is still not enough for our family of 4 (maybe covers 70%).
I think your house may be an anomaly. From what I've read, the average Bay Area house produces more from solar than it uses.
Anecdotally, every person I know with solar does not pay an electric bill (I also live in the Bay Area). My neighbor has solar, and has four adults in the house. They also run a catering business so they have a commercial walk in freezer and refrigerator in addition to their normal appliances, and they don't pay an electric bill either.
And when I run the calculator for my own house, it looks like I won't pay a bill either, despite running the A/C all summer and the heat all winter. We've just been too lazy to get it done.
Few people have heat pumps, and who is going to pay to give everyone a heat pump? We could do some tax credits and that would help, but then what? Also I've never seen a heat pump for cooking or even hot water, just home heating.
The original post is talking about new homes being built. Presumably these new homes will have air conditioning, given that this is California. So instead of just installing an A/C unit, it will be a heat pump instead.
For cooking, induction stovetops are far superior to gas burners.
The only thing that may require resistive heating is the hot water heater, but that's a fairly small portion of overall energy usage.
> This is stupid. Burning gas on-site for heat is far more efficient than burning something far away, turning it into electricity at max 60% efficiency (usually more like 30-40%), transmitting it through the grid, and then putting it through a resistance heater.
Since I read your comment I've been trying to do the math on this. Obviously modern houses aren't going to use resistance heaters, they're going to use efficient heat pump/AC units. So let's assume (worst case) that the entire CA grid burns gas (i.e., no nuclear or renewables), and that only 40% of the energy from each unit of gas burned at a power plant actually reaches a home in the form of electricity. Let's also assume a fancy 90% efficient gas furnace vs. a standard 300% efficient heat pump.
So by my napkin math, for every unit of gas burned at the power plant the electric solution is getting us 40%*300%=120% of one unit worth of heat energy pumped into our home. Whereas for the same amount of gas (and assuming gas distribution consumes no energy, which is obviously silly), the gas furnace is getting us 90% of one unit of heat energy into our home. I'm probably not computing this correctly, but my naive understanding is that this means 33% more heat for a given fuel usage (and CO2 emissions production) when using a heat pump vs. burning fuel in the house.
But on top of that, CA's electric grid isn't burning just natural gas. It's burning a mix of different fuels, some of which are dirtier than natural gas, and some of which are low- or zero-CO2 emissions. This is before we consider the mandate to add solar to new houses. So presumably even today, using an electric-based system will give even better CO2 results than the mere 33% improvement in heat-per-unit-CO2 would seem to give us if we assume everything is powered by natural gas.
Maybe this is wrong, but I'm really struggling to see why we would pump gas into our house and burn it under these conditions.
I've never seen one installed in a house, so that's a new one to me. At the same time, this page (https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-pump-systems/absorpt...) makes it sound that they're mostly available for industrial applications, and that residential gas heat pumps are hard to find (actually says "under development".) Also notes that "absorption coolers and heat pumps usually only make sense in homes without an electricity source."
For me, it is impossible to cook properly on anything but a well controlled flame. Humans have used fire for millennia to cook our food. Making the modern, reasonable version of this illegal is an oppressive idea. Why should the restaurant industry be allowed to continue to use gas but I can't use it at home to make my own meals? Quit trying to control everyone.
This measure may not be the right thing, but isn't it also controlling in a different way to change the composition of other's atmospheric gases in a harmful way? Just because it is diffuse responsibility doesn't mean it is less controlling in aggregate.
Less than 1% of emissions are from breath, which we can all agree is necessary and not currently above the CO2 re-absorption rate.
Here we are talking about achieving a more even Malliard reaction on flapjacks. Cooking may not be significant enough to worry about first either, I don't know, but it is a form of control (free choice of more evenly browned flapjacks for no choice of of someone else facing faster timeframe to be flooded out of their nation or city).
A natural gas flame is much better for air quality than any other common combustion-based heat source (like, sure, hydrogen would be a bit better, but...).
Funny that your comment is downvoted. Induction is both safer, more efficient, and easier to control. I can dial my stovetop into an exact temperature, and a pot of water boils under a minute.
I have a builder-grade gas stove, and my gf moved into a new place with a fancy new high-end Bosch induction cooktop. I cook on both regularly. The induction stove is far slower to heat up, and very finicky to use (will sometimes shut off). Not to mention that my gf had to get mostly new pots and pans to use the induction, since most of her existing pots and pans were not magnetic.
Also, the gas stove will continue to work when the power is out. All I have to do is light it with a match, but the induction cooktop will be out of commission as long as the power is out. We regularly have electric outages, but I don't remember ever having a gas outage.
Give me a break. Humans have not used natural gas for millennia to cook. If this was truly about sticking to your roots, you'd be cooking over a woodburning stove and this wouldn't be an argument. But you're not, because this is about something else.
If it was literally "impossible" then you probably have some impairment that prevents you from caring for yourself. But "Impossible" here doesn't mean its literal definition, right? It roughly translates to something like "too different from my old routine for me to put forth any energy toward adapting in the name of public health and the environment."
This has to he the most bogus and first-world complaint for people to throw a fit over having to cook with electricity.
Which proves his point - its not as life-ending as the top level OP made it sound. I hate cooking on electric stoves but lets not pretend its akin to losing a leg.
If wood burning stoves are illegal to install on private property away from cities, that's something I would agree is a problem. As far as I know though it is legal.
It obviously not impossible and the poster was being a bit hyperbolic.
However it is more difficult to cook well on electric hobs than gas hobs as you can't directly adjust the heat as needed. Given the choice (I don't have it) I would take gas everytime.
I didn't say it was impossible full stop. I said it is impossible to cook things _properly_ with just electric which is true if you know much about cooking.
I used to think the same thing, but now I have an induction stove and it is significantly better than the gas range at my previous house. It heats the pan instead of the air/element, and so it is significantly more efficient. A side benefit is significantly reduced exhaust load and a much easier to clean cooktop.
Agreed. I've heard people make this argument for years but they always seem to ignore changes in tech. A high quality range can reach the temperatures necessary for canning (another thing I've been told you can't do without a flame) and hold a consistent temperature the entire time.
It's just a different way of thinking about it. Not sure how it could be impossible to use an electric range to "properly" cooj.
I find it MUCH easier to simmer at a low temperature with electric, and I prefer the dial a temp, over dial a volume of natural gas. You don't have to tinker nearly so often. Want a nice slow boil, just set the temp, watch it run at 100% till it reaches the temp, then throttle back as the temp is reached.
Similarly when cooking any kind of reduction you don't have to keep tinkering as larger fractions of the water cooks off.
> Humans have not used natural gas for millennia to cook.
I didn't say that so please don't put words in my mouth. Natural gas is the most reasonable and common way to cook with fire year round. Additionally, new wood burning equipment is already outlawed in many places.
I also did not say it was impossible to cook at all with electric. I said it is impossible to cook properly with electric. If you know anything about cooking you know that is a fact.
Some people cook as a passion and care deeply about the tools they use to make the food they eat. Maybe we should outlaw whatever hobby you have! How would you like that?
> I said it is impossible to cook properly with electric. If you know anything about cooking you know that is a fact.
I do and I do not know that as a fact. Can you cite it please?
Heat is an important aspect of cooking, but the source of the heat (outside of hotspots) isn't maybe as important as cookware heat-storage-capacity/heat transfer speed.
The only thing I can immediately point to gas doing that electric/induction cannot is a traditional round-bottom wok. But I'd be lying if I said a wok was a major part of my cooking.
I’m not agreeing with or disagreeing with you, but the tone of your message is pretty shit and berates OP for having their own opinion. Be kind.
Either way, OP’s remarks are common sentiment. I’ve heard from plenty of home chefs that a gas stove is drastically easier to work on. I can sympathize with them wanting options in their life.
Your criticism is a little bit ironic, but despite that and the downvotes I think you make a fair point, it could come across harsh and probably not very useful for persuasion
I also like cooking on a gas stove. But given the serious effects we're already seeing from climate change (just watch some videos from last summer in CA) I think statements like "quit trying to control me [so I can enjoy a slightly better hobbyist cooking experience]" also seem kind of crappy.
Practice makes perfect. Electric stoves are in wide-spread uses all around the world. You're right that they require a different technique but I'm sure that you, too, would be able to master it.
Obviously they're not better in every way, that's the whole point of the article. When it comes to the cooking performance, though, have I claimed otherwise? All I said was that it is absolutely possible to prepare your meals with electric, as proofed by millions of people using them. They're different, of course, but absolutely usable.
Commercial kitchens have been switching to induction because the new units can maintain precise temperature, it also allows for much cooler kitchens, it’s easier to clean, and it gives them flexibility for staffing options, because the precise maintainable temperature control some cooking methods become almost foolproof.
You can get a portable induction cooktop for under $50. My parents have 2 Ikea units which they often use instead of their Viking stove. (They place them on top of the stove so they can use the hood).
Pans are the same price as regular cookware, you just need to make sure it's compatible.
> requires the use of certain types of pans which increases cost more.
Really, no. Walmart's "own brand" stainless steel pans that start at under $10 work fine. The pans it doesn't work with are actually rare/expensive (pure aluminum/pure copper, and certain high-end stainless steel that are now largely discontinued).
People repeat this special pan thing often (multiple times in this thread) but I don't know where this idea came from. The most common/popular pans for the last fifty years work with induction, and cheap ones are MORE likely to work.
There's a ton of crappy teflon&aluminum cookware out there. It's not that you need a special pan, but nor can you use just any old pan. FWIW, I've been cooking electric my whole life, and using induction or gas is annoying to me (though I've lived a couple years in apartments with either)
It doesn't work well with a wok though, nor does it - or any other ceramic-covered stove (halogen, IR) - cope well with those who have an "active" style of cooking where the pan is moved almost as much as the utensil. I was an early adopter of induction in the 90's in the Netherlands but moved back to a wood-burning stove when I moved to Sweden. Yes, wood, in Swedish called "vedspis" (firewood-stove). It warms the house, it works when the power fails - which is does regularly out here in the countryside - and it works wonders with a wok. I still have a few induction plates but I hardly ever user them other than outside when there is fire ban in summer.
Gas use in homes goes way beyond the stove though. I just moved into a newly renovated house, it has a brand new gas stove which is amazing. But it also has a gas furnace, gas water heater, and a brand new gas washer/dryer. No idea why they'd install a brand new gas dryer in this day and age - likely the power bill is a little cheaper from it (which is itself a problem), but I plan to install solar panels in the not too distant future like many in my neighborhood already have in which case the gas version definitely becomes more expensive.
Plus even for the stove, it has an attached gas oven, which doesn't really bring me any benefit except maybe a marginally faster pre-heat time that I can live without. It's even a net negative to me because now if I want to do any kind of slow cook in the oven I need to worry about ventilation and it's hard for it to hold a steady low temperature. Heck even for the stove, I wish it had half electric burners and half gas, if I'm doing some slower process like making a stock or chili or something I'd rather use electric to again avoid the fumes.
So despite the fact that I love being able to saute over a flame now, I'd definitely support a tax that makes using gas much more expensive. A full-on ban would be extreme, I'd agree with you that's overly aggressive control, especially until electric burners get better. But ideally I could choose and in places where I actually get a lot of value from it I could pay the higher price to offset my environmental impact, but in all the other uses it would make more economical sense to avoid it so appliance makers, construction companies, etc would be incentivized to drastically reduce the use of gas.
Gas dryers last longer and are easier to maintain, in my experience. Same with gas stoves and ovens. Slow cooking is better done in an electric slow cooker, electric pressure cookers are great.
NG v. Solar is a non-obvious environmental question to ask. If you are posting from CA (the reflexive support for an additional tax suggests Pacific coast at least), you have the sort of folks who can answer that in your own backyard, LLBL. Lawrence Berkeley Labs. Check their website and publications.
This is not a good argument. There are plenty of advantages to cooking on electric induction stoves and most people can adjust their preferences to use a new and improved tool. Rapid temperature control, even heat distribution, with a bonus of being better for the environment (assuming renewable energy is used).
I suspect if they did that a lot of people would buy propane for cooking. I know most people who care about food use gas to cook.
Induction cooktops are pretty close as far as speed of adjusting temperature, but they still aren't hot right away, and are really expensive and require specific (more expensive) cookware.
No, induction cooktops are "hot" (heating your cookware) absolutely instantly, and in power boost mode transfers more energy into your cookware than gas. Basic ones are also no longer expensive, at least not in Europe.
You do need magnetic cookware so pure aluminum pots are right out but you really don't need expensive stuff.
> Basic ones are also no longer expensive, at least not in Europe.
Hopefully if they ban gas in homes that becomes true here too. But I just looked, and the cheapest induction cooktop I could find was $1,200, 2.2x the price of an average gas cooktop and 3x the price of an average electric.
But you would save money by not connecting the house to a gas line. Then there's the gas consumption, but I don't know how that compares to electricity.
Here electricity is 2-10x the cost of gas (depending on the electric usage tier you’re in) for simple stuff like heating. I pay over $0.40/kWh for electricity...
> But you would save money by not connecting the house to a gas line.
For a new construction, maybe, but the plumber is already onsite to do the water pipes, so it's not much more to add in a few gas pipes. For an existing house, it's already there. It takes over 100 years to turn over the housing stock, so you'd need to maintain the gas infrastructure for quite some time before you'd start saving any money.
> Then there's the gas consumption, but I don't know how that compares to electricity
Here in the Bay Area gas is a lot cheaper than electricity. But that's because our utility is a crappy monopoly. In cities with their own power generation, like Santa Clara, they're on par with each other.
Induction has some issues (e.g. hotspots), but speed isn't even ballpark one of them.
> require specific (more expensive) cookware
It is the high-end/niche cookware that can sometimes be incompatible (e.g. pure aluminum/copper cookware), most common/cheap cookware is compatible just by virtue of the less expensive metal used in it.
Most stainless steel and all cast iron cookware are compatible, and most high-end/niche cookware is adapting to be compatible as induction is the new hotness (particularly with recent focus on the environmental damage/fume issues with gas).
LA county bought 18% of its electricity from Utah, where it is generated in the dirtiest way possible - with coal.
Utah's power plants are now ramping up capacity due to increased demand from CA (which will go up because CA closes its nuclear).
The increased capacity will come from natural gas and "clean coal" (lol)
There's another discussion here on this topic based on the article from qz.com / undark.org entitled "Experts are sounding the alarm about the hidden dangers of gas stoves":
My gas stove has 4 D-sized Batteries underneath, haven't replaced them in nearly a decade.
For the less fortunate, if you don't own a single spark source to light a gas fire in your house it's highly likely you have far greater immediate survival issues to face.
Many gas water heaters will definitely work. New tankless style ones may not if their thermostats rely on power, but the last 3 tanked water heaters I installed didn’t have any electrical hookups..
my non-tankless that I got this year is hooked up to the electricity. I don't know if that's just to ignite the pilot light though (and therefore would continue to work if the power was out and the light was on).
CA's power demand is already greater than supply because our politicians close nuclear.
But we see relatively few outages related to supply because CA just buys more and more power from other places like Utah (where it is generated with coal and ramping up due to demand from CA)
Most of our power outages is related to obsolete and un-maintained power-grid being fragile to high loads and wind.
I actually had a few power outages yesterday and it reiterated to me how utterly dependent I am on electricity. Fortunately I have a propane grill and a gas stove I can manually ignite. Otherwise I probably would've just eaten a box of goldfish for lunch and dinner.
Even though some gas appliances (like ovens and heaters) don't work without electricity, I think stoves and gas fireplaces could be really helpful in life or death situations such as extended power outages caused by "the big one". On the other hand I suppose gas lines are one more thing that can be damaged, so there's a tradeoff there.
I actually know some people in outage prone areas who have invested in natural gas generators. Much cheaper than a Tesla battery pack and similar storage solutions
Most common cookware works with induction. Even copper/aluminum core has no problem, and most stainless steel. The stuff that doesn't work is quite niche (pure aluminum/pure copper, and some high-end stainless steel).
Or use a really round bottom wok. Or a Norwegian apfelskiver pan. Or a Japanese tacoyaki pan. Or proper broiling in a salamander. Or for putting out the BTUs cheaply enough for beer making.
Gas stoves and equipment are appreciated by good cooks.
I'd prefer if they did but I use it for cooking right now. Solar + induction cooking sounds great, but it's still "advanced" for many. Electric heating is more expensive, but again - if it's backed by solar that's subsidized as part of build then that's likely going to be cheaper too.
Is there no way CA can massively reduce gas without banning?
The answer is no, they shouldn't. But LA Times needs to sell clicks, and politicians need to get re-elected.
There's a lot of reasons. First, harm to low income families. For instance, _requiring_ that new homes have electric vehicle chargers in the garage does nothing to help immigrant families purchasing their first home is a similar proposal that doesn't nothing but increase harm to the environment and low income families. This is another one of those stupid laws that are designed to move ownernship out of the hands of the poor and keep it centralized to the rich.
Second, This sounds like way to funnel money to political donors.
Third, didn't PG&E just set half the state on fire? Is this really a good idea to load them up even more?
Finally, politicians need to focus on results, not specifying the means. Let the free market, actual scientists and engineers figure it out.
> For instance, _requiring_ that new homes have electric vehicle chargers in the garage does nothing to help immigrant families purchasing their first home.
Solar panels is something I'm surprised isn't required more, but I guess depending where you live they could go flying off, like in Florida it is a concern to some. However, if it is built-in to how the roof is designed, I can't imagine it'd go flying off if properly secured on your roof. Maybe once the technology matures to the ones Tesla has and sells.
I'm not sure it is a great idea. Utility scale solar farms are more cost effective and California has plenty of room for more solar farms, even though the farm approach requires more transmission investments. It might prove beneficial if PG&E continues to respond to high fire risk conditions by shutting off power delivery.
Not sure what you mean by free market in this case? Right now households can use electric and gas, and there is no ceiling to how much they can use of each. How would politicians reduce the carbon footprint of homes without changing that? Even adding taxes would disrupt the free market.
> First, harm to low income families. For instance, _requiring_ that new homes have electric vehicle chargers in the garage does nothing to help immigrant families purchasing their first home is a similar proposal that doesn't nothing but increase harm to the environment and low income families.
Adding a level 2 charger to an existing home ranges from a few hundred dollars up to around $2k, depending on where you are in the US and whether or not you need a new 240 V circuit installed.
For a new home, where you can put in a 240 V circuit for it while you are doing all the rest of the wiring, with very little additional material or labor. It's only going to raise the cost of the house by a little more than the cost of the charger itself, which will be a few hundred dollars.
A few hundred dollars is a _lot_ of money to some people. The problem is elitists are so disconnected from the reality of others they don't see this as an issue.
Yes, a few hundred dollars is a _lot_ of money to many people. And those people aren't buying newly constructed houses.
Someone buying a newly constructed house for whom an additional few hundred on the mortgage (which will add about $2/month to their mortgage payment) is a big deal is someone who is not anywhere near ready financially to be buying a house.
Seriously? After using natural gas in my home, I can’t go back. Gas logs in a fireplace are our emergency heat source during the winter in case of a power outage. Gas furnace and water heaters have been tremendously more effective at controlling temperature than any electrics that I’ve dealt with. The gas stove was absolutely life changing for how we cook at home.
And that’s before we factor in almost all emergency home generators run on natural gas.
have you tried induction stoves? they heat more evenly than conduction electric, more efficiently and safely than gas, they are perfectly flat and a breeze to clean. Superior in essentially every way, but for some reason not very popular in the States.
Switching to electricity makes the supply much more flexible. When a power plant spins up or shuts down, that affects the CO2 output of every customer on the grid. It's much easier to quickly bring more grid-scale solar and wind online than to retrofit millions of houses with new stoves after the fact.
Wind is often available at night. Currently, there is not enough renewable capacity to handle everything, but that is changing. As storage gets cheaper and more common (in electric cars for example), it will get more practical.
Storage is getting cheaper but the growth curve doesn't have the right exponent because we don't have the battery science or the battery technology to meet grid scale energy needs.
You need energy storage at scale at night. The only solution at night after batteries (chemical, stored water, gravity, etc.) are quickly depleted is natural gas.
Modern nuclear reactor designs could easily fill the gap. Public sentiment and the risk of building in earthquake prone geography has prevented investment in nuclear.
And in 10, 20 years, these statistics will change.
If new buildings being added to the building stock are built with gas, then people will still be reliant on gas to cook. If they are added with electric/induction stoves, then everyone will benefit from the grid's shift away from natural gas.
There is no night time renewable supply at California scale without nuclear power. For nuclear power to be available 10-20 years from now, those proposed plants would need to be going through approvals now. None are.
California will be burning gas 10 to 20 years from now.
Winds die down at night. No battery tech today can store the energy needs of millions and millions of home during the night. We do not have dam capacity to build water batteries at the scale needed.
Without nuclear or dramatic battery innovations, we will always burn natural gas for night time energy.
How sure of that are you? I’m not so sure but quick google says maybe not as true as you imply: https://slate.com/business/2015/09/texas-electricity-goes-ne.... Maybe région dépendant? Is that a deal breaker given power can be transported between regions?
> Battery tech
I see part of the point of this legislation is to drive innovation. We’ll never get change if we just say “it’s impossible so we have to burn fossils.” I don’t dispute any of your points really except if the policy is gradual enough it will force us to adapt and that is a good thing IMO.
This legislation won't drive innovation. It'll just move the burning of fossil fuels out to the electric power plant instead of at the consumer level.
Burning natural gas to produce electricity to power electric heaters at home is actually worse from a CO2 perspective than burning natural gas directly for home heating.
It’ll move SOME burning. Some burning will be replaced by other fuels sources, and as more alternatives are ramped up less and less of that moved gas will be burned. Whereas if it’s a stove, you’re committing to 20+ years of 100% gas burning on that stove. If you think ÇA can’t make a dent in gas consumption in 20 years then we just disagree about that.
If you have unlimited clean energy, what's the difference if you provide it to an induction top, or use it to run the Sabatier process and let people cook how they are used to?
Only if the buildings aren’t wired for 240V electric anyway, which I assume they are. You can always replace with electric at your leisure.
Requiring a 240V drop in the kitchen I could see. Makes the replacement of a gas oven with electric easier, if the homeowner wishes and an easy requirement for builders to meet.
Banning an NG connection limits choice today and is based upon a forecast for the future that may not occur in the timeframe you are expecting.
We know how to supply electricity cleanly, even if we aren't doing it yet. That means that these homes can eventually not contribute to carbon pollution.
1/5th or so of California power is from Hydro, and that could increase if the water supply was increased.
Using daytime solar excess to pump water uphill lets you get double duty out of the hydro and looks to be about the right amount of after hours energy use.
Sure, but hydro is pretty unique in that the hydro dams, generators, and grid connections already exist and it can store well enough to not recharge just for hours/days/weeks, but even months.
Not really, it's typically water limited and not run full out. If water was pumped up during sunny (or windy) days when there's a surplus you could reuse the same water over and over again.
nothing is ripped out because it's only a ban for new construction, which is pretty rare in most of ca actually. In LA in particular, homes are never torn down and rebuilt because there are so many restrictions that apply to new construction but not grandfathered homes.
If the rate of new construction is low, then hopefully renewables plus batteries will be able to keep up with increased nighttime demand.
I don't think most legislators (or people trying to influence legislators) have a good holistic picture about whether banning gas helps or hurts. It's a very complex issue.
Do they consider, for example, that the situation in the US is (or was for the last many years) a natural gas surplus due to the byproducts of the fracking industry? And that the gas would be burnt or flared if not sent for distribution? And that, with natural gas being better carbon-wise than coal-fired electricity, this might be a net benefit?
And that to incentivize the building of any kind of gas pipelines, it takes decades of certainty about demand?
And that household gas usage is a drop in the bucket?
The list of issues to consider goes on and on. It's not just "burning fossil fuels = bad".
Well, the non-regressive way to do this is to offer incentives, right? Like you add a gas line surcharge for new construction with an annual fee, use it to set up a fund, and then new construction with no gas gets a rebate.
CA lawmaking usually is kind of blind to second-order effects so I'm not surprised. Lawmakers have added numerous laws constraining home construction and then lament the "heart-breaking" housing crisis.
It's an interesting lesson in how to structure changes you want.
If California starts regulating new homes without also regulating old homes it raises the value of old homes while making new homes more expensive.
Who would support this? I think California property owners should support any and all restrictions on new homes. Who is against this? Probably a small subset of people who intend on building a home in the near future.
I get it, I really do, that we want to transition to fully renewable energy and I'm willing to give up using a fire stove top even though I absolutely hate my current electric stove top. What I have a problem with (maybe I didn't look hard enough) is how we're going to transition to meet the electric demand with our old infrastructure. People forget how damn energy dense fossil fuels are. If everything is electric and to make more electricity, we will need to burn fossil fuels to meet the demand, it makes things even worse environmentally (there is no universe where burning fuel at the generator, distributing, and using it for heat is more efficient than just straight-up burning the fuel at source). Even the Bay Area, one of arguably the most energy progressive area cannot transition fully to renewables only within the next decade or two.
This. It's easy for politicians to come up with great sounding, but unrealistic and ineffective plans for making a major dent on our fossil fuel reliance. We should keep trying, but right now I don't see any realistic way to truly get rid of natural gas without nuclear - and I'd take nuclear over fossil any day.
You can meet new electric demand with new infrastructure. We'll need new transmission lines, new nuclear, batteries, etc. I surely hope we don't lay down and stop building great new things.
As Saul Griffith explains at Rewiring America (https://www.rewiringamerica.org/), massively switching to all existing electric technology (cars, stoves, heat pumps, electric hot water heaters, rooftop and community solar panels, etc) and powering them by clean electricity will:
- decarbonize 80% of US energy by as soon as 2035
- create up to 25 million new jobs
- save the average household $1000-$2000 every year
- massively reduce pollution-related health effects
All without downgrading the size of our homes and vehicles (which probably should be done anyway though). Electrification is the way to go if we want to stay under 2 degrees of warming.
Saul needs to spend a little less time on these projections, and a little more time on Makani Power, because it's not looking good. (I'm a big fan of the concept of airborned wind turbines FYA).
I'm an open-minded person, and I've installed solar and micro-hydro residential systems in the past. I'm a fan of these technologies and a carbon-free future, but I'm also highly skeptical of intelligent humans who make bold, risky predictions about massive systems and how they'd react to changes. Historically, it's gone rather poorly most of the time.
Eventually California is going to come to a head we will have to choose: spiraling out of control electricity costs, or backing down from climate catastrophe thinking. Eventually the state is going to regulate people into poverty
Everybody’s talking about cooking. What about heat? Parts of California get COLD. A therm (100,000 BTUs, roughly 29.3 kW-H) is $0.36 according to SoCal Gas. The equivalent in resistance heat would be roughly $5.80 @ $0.20/kW-H (being generous here, my electric rate was much higher in Los Angeles). A heat pump (reverse air conditioner) can double or triple your electric heating efficiency, but only works when it’s relatively warm outside (> ~30F / 0C) and you’re still looking at $2+ for the equivalent heat energy. So you’d more than QUADRUPLE heating bills. Not gonna happen.
I don't understand why people on this thread are discussing installing resistance heat in new housing stock. It is not 1974. Modern heat pumps are cheap, have 300% efficiency even in cold places, and their cost has plummeted. They also double as AC units, which will almost certainly be installed in virtually all new housing anyway.
Where I live it's essential to have a backup to electrically powered heat. Power just isn't that reliable, especially in a big, freezing winter storm. In California, add their notoriously unreliable grid to the calculation.
Also, for my house a winter's worth of electrical heat costs about $1,700. Propane heating costs about $1,400. If I use my woodstove and buy the wood it costs about $600. If I cut my own wood it costs about $150 for fuel and maintenance. So forcing electrical heat also amounts to a large implicit tax.
I wasn't aware that this article was about proposing to force the use of electrical heat vs. woodstoves. The discussion was about whether we should have natural gas hookups in new homes. Obviously backups are good, as is increased electrical reliability -- but it's not clear that building parallel natural gas and electrical infrastructure is a better use of resources than just using those resources to make the electrical infrastructure more reliable.
PS I grew up in a wood-heated home in Vermont and stacked cords of wood every year. Except for freezing my ass of every morning until the fire was going, I think wood heat is great. Unfortunately it does have some particulate issues in urban areas, and (related) doesn't scale well. But I'm not saying people shouldn't use it where it makes sense.
This is not a climate change issue. This is about PG&E not able to maintain their lines, and the deterioration due to government ineptitude causing exclusions. Natural gas is not the problem, it’s a very affordable solution for those of you who don’t live in the bubble of Silicon Valley. California just doesn’t want another house to explode. It’s like banning Rail travel because you can’t fix the railroads.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadIf all or even most of that electricity were renewable or nuclear you'd have an advantage in terms of CO2 there, but it's not. Renewable can peak out at >50% of power during the day, but it's also important to note that heat and cooking needs usually peak at night. It's out of phase with renewable supply.
Politicians can set the what, but never ever let them specify how. They are not qualified. Set a CO2 target and let actual engineers figure it out.
Both CO2 and energy usage are global things, not local. There is no such thing as saying "my heat is sourced from solar power".
Getting rid of natural gas is environmentally foolish, at least until we reach the fairy tale world where nothing is burned for energy.
Today though? This idea of "no natural gas", harms the environment.
We heat and cook with gas. So solar goes to appliances, tech, and AC (few days in summer) and one Nissan leaf. It is still not enough for our family of 4 (maybe covers 70%).
Anecdotally, every person I know with solar does not pay an electric bill (I also live in the Bay Area). My neighbor has solar, and has four adults in the house. They also run a catering business so they have a commercial walk in freezer and refrigerator in addition to their normal appliances, and they don't pay an electric bill either.
And when I run the calculator for my own house, it looks like I won't pay a bill either, despite running the A/C all summer and the heat all winter. We've just been too lazy to get it done.
Maybe your system isn't working correctly?
For cooking, induction stovetops are far superior to gas burners.
The only thing that may require resistive heating is the hot water heater, but that's a fairly small portion of overall energy usage.
Since I read your comment I've been trying to do the math on this. Obviously modern houses aren't going to use resistance heaters, they're going to use efficient heat pump/AC units. So let's assume (worst case) that the entire CA grid burns gas (i.e., no nuclear or renewables), and that only 40% of the energy from each unit of gas burned at a power plant actually reaches a home in the form of electricity. Let's also assume a fancy 90% efficient gas furnace vs. a standard 300% efficient heat pump.
So by my napkin math, for every unit of gas burned at the power plant the electric solution is getting us 40%*300%=120% of one unit worth of heat energy pumped into our home. Whereas for the same amount of gas (and assuming gas distribution consumes no energy, which is obviously silly), the gas furnace is getting us 90% of one unit of heat energy into our home. I'm probably not computing this correctly, but my naive understanding is that this means 33% more heat for a given fuel usage (and CO2 emissions production) when using a heat pump vs. burning fuel in the house.
But on top of that, CA's electric grid isn't burning just natural gas. It's burning a mix of different fuels, some of which are dirtier than natural gas, and some of which are low- or zero-CO2 emissions. This is before we consider the mandate to add solar to new houses. So presumably even today, using an electric-based system will give even better CO2 results than the mere 33% improvement in heat-per-unit-CO2 would seem to give us if we assume everything is powered by natural gas.
Maybe this is wrong, but I'm really struggling to see why we would pump gas into our house and burn it under these conditions.
You have forgotten about absorption heat pumps, which are powered by natural gas and are even more efficient than electric ones.
Here we are talking about achieving a more even Malliard reaction on flapjacks. Cooking may not be significant enough to worry about first either, I don't know, but it is a form of control (free choice of more evenly browned flapjacks for no choice of of someone else facing faster timeframe to be flooded out of their nation or city).
Yeah, sure but certainly not from a gas flame.
Simply put, they shouldn't. But they have more money and thus more political sway to get carve-outs.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90313508/why-top-restaurants-are...
Also, the gas stove will continue to work when the power is out. All I have to do is light it with a match, but the induction cooktop will be out of commission as long as the power is out. We regularly have electric outages, but I don't remember ever having a gas outage.
If it was literally "impossible" then you probably have some impairment that prevents you from caring for yourself. But "Impossible" here doesn't mean its literal definition, right? It roughly translates to something like "too different from my old routine for me to put forth any energy toward adapting in the name of public health and the environment."
This has to he the most bogus and first-world complaint for people to throw a fit over having to cook with electricity.
EDIT: fireplace->stove
No one compared it to that or anything like that.
However it is more difficult to cook well on electric hobs than gas hobs as you can't directly adjust the heat as needed. Given the choice (I don't have it) I would take gas everytime.
Also, water boils so fast now! You'd be amazed.
I'm very happy with my electric ranges.
I've never seen an induction hob ever. Almost everyone I know has gas or electric and electric has always been more difficult to cook on.
I find it MUCH easier to simmer at a low temperature with electric, and I prefer the dial a temp, over dial a volume of natural gas. You don't have to tinker nearly so often. Want a nice slow boil, just set the temp, watch it run at 100% till it reaches the temp, then throttle back as the temp is reached.
Similarly when cooking any kind of reduction you don't have to keep tinkering as larger fractions of the water cooks off.
I didn't say that so please don't put words in my mouth. Natural gas is the most reasonable and common way to cook with fire year round. Additionally, new wood burning equipment is already outlawed in many places.
I also did not say it was impossible to cook at all with electric. I said it is impossible to cook properly with electric. If you know anything about cooking you know that is a fact.
Some people cook as a passion and care deeply about the tools they use to make the food they eat. Maybe we should outlaw whatever hobby you have! How would you like that?
I do and I do not know that as a fact. Can you cite it please?
Heat is an important aspect of cooking, but the source of the heat (outside of hotspots) isn't maybe as important as cookware heat-storage-capacity/heat transfer speed.
The only thing I can immediately point to gas doing that electric/induction cannot is a traditional round-bottom wok. But I'd be lying if I said a wok was a major part of my cooking.
Either way, OP’s remarks are common sentiment. I’ve heard from plenty of home chefs that a gas stove is drastically easier to work on. I can sympathize with them wanting options in their life.
Induction cooktops largely fix this, though.
Obviously there are some cooking techniques that require flames, but heat is ultimately fungible when it comes to pans etc.
Commercial kitchens have been switching to induction because the new units can maintain precise temperature, it also allows for much cooler kitchens, it’s easier to clean, and it gives them flexibility for staffing options, because the precise maintainable temperature control some cooking methods become almost foolproof.
Pans are the same price as regular cookware, you just need to make sure it's compatible.
Really, no. Walmart's "own brand" stainless steel pans that start at under $10 work fine. The pans it doesn't work with are actually rare/expensive (pure aluminum/pure copper, and certain high-end stainless steel that are now largely discontinued).
People repeat this special pan thing often (multiple times in this thread) but I don't know where this idea came from. The most common/popular pans for the last fifty years work with induction, and cheap ones are MORE likely to work.
Plus even for the stove, it has an attached gas oven, which doesn't really bring me any benefit except maybe a marginally faster pre-heat time that I can live without. It's even a net negative to me because now if I want to do any kind of slow cook in the oven I need to worry about ventilation and it's hard for it to hold a steady low temperature. Heck even for the stove, I wish it had half electric burners and half gas, if I'm doing some slower process like making a stock or chili or something I'd rather use electric to again avoid the fumes.
So despite the fact that I love being able to saute over a flame now, I'd definitely support a tax that makes using gas much more expensive. A full-on ban would be extreme, I'd agree with you that's overly aggressive control, especially until electric burners get better. But ideally I could choose and in places where I actually get a lot of value from it I could pay the higher price to offset my environmental impact, but in all the other uses it would make more economical sense to avoid it so appliance makers, construction companies, etc would be incentivized to drastically reduce the use of gas.
NG v. Solar is a non-obvious environmental question to ask. If you are posting from CA (the reflexive support for an additional tax suggests Pacific coast at least), you have the sort of folks who can answer that in your own backyard, LLBL. Lawrence Berkeley Labs. Check their website and publications.
Induction cooktops are pretty close as far as speed of adjusting temperature, but they still aren't hot right away, and are really expensive and require specific (more expensive) cookware.
There are zero hotspots so food doesn’t scorch.
The one I used heated up equally as fast as gas.
> There are zero hotspots so food doesn’t scorch.
Heh, I actually keep a heat gun next to the stove so I can check for hotspots. But you're right, that is a big problem with gas.
You do need magnetic cookware so pure aluminum pots are right out but you really don't need expensive stuff.
Hopefully if they ban gas in homes that becomes true here too. But I just looked, and the cheapest induction cooktop I could find was $1,200, 2.2x the price of an average gas cooktop and 3x the price of an average electric.
For a new construction, maybe, but the plumber is already onsite to do the water pipes, so it's not much more to add in a few gas pipes. For an existing house, it's already there. It takes over 100 years to turn over the housing stock, so you'd need to maintain the gas infrastructure for quite some time before you'd start saving any money.
> Then there's the gas consumption, but I don't know how that compares to electricity
Here in the Bay Area gas is a lot cheaper than electricity. But that's because our utility is a crappy monopoly. In cities with their own power generation, like Santa Clara, they're on par with each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjRcEwLGtV8
Induction will heat up food/water FASTER than gas. Twice as fast in this video for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjRcEwLGtV8
Induction has some issues (e.g. hotspots), but speed isn't even ballpark one of them.
> require specific (more expensive) cookware
It is the high-end/niche cookware that can sometimes be incompatible (e.g. pure aluminum/copper cookware), most common/cheap cookware is compatible just by virtue of the less expensive metal used in it.
Most stainless steel and all cast iron cookware are compatible, and most high-end/niche cookware is adapting to be compatible as induction is the new hotness (particularly with recent focus on the environmental damage/fume issues with gas).
> California bans gas in new homes
> Due to increased demand California starts buying coal based electricity from other states
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25332332
For the less fortunate, if you don't own a single spark source to light a gas fire in your house it's highly likely you have far greater immediate survival issues to face.
This doesn’t apply to gas fireplaces or smaller room sized radiant gas heater though.
Most of our power outages is related to obsolete and un-maintained power-grid being fragile to high loads and wind.
Even though some gas appliances (like ovens and heaters) don't work without electricity, I think stoves and gas fireplaces could be really helpful in life or death situations such as extended power outages caused by "the big one". On the other hand I suppose gas lines are one more thing that can be damaged, so there's a tradeoff there.
I actually know some people in outage prone areas who have invested in natural gas generators. Much cheaper than a Tesla battery pack and similar storage solutions
Most common cookware works with induction. Even copper/aluminum core has no problem, and most stainless steel. The stuff that doesn't work is quite niche (pure aluminum/pure copper, and some high-end stainless steel).
Gas stoves and equipment are appreciated by good cooks.
Is there no way CA can massively reduce gas without banning?
There's a lot of reasons. First, harm to low income families. For instance, _requiring_ that new homes have electric vehicle chargers in the garage does nothing to help immigrant families purchasing their first home is a similar proposal that doesn't nothing but increase harm to the environment and low income families. This is another one of those stupid laws that are designed to move ownernship out of the hands of the poor and keep it centralized to the rich.
Second, This sounds like way to funnel money to political donors.
Third, didn't PG&E just set half the state on fire? Is this really a good idea to load them up even more?
Finally, politicians need to focus on results, not specifying the means. Let the free market, actual scientists and engineers figure it out.
Solar panels is something I'm surprised isn't required more, but I guess depending where you live they could go flying off, like in Florida it is a concern to some. However, if it is built-in to how the roof is designed, I can't imagine it'd go flying off if properly secured on your roof. Maybe once the technology matures to the ones Tesla has and sells.
https://news.energysage.com/an-overview-of-the-california-so...
I'm not sure it is a great idea. Utility scale solar farms are more cost effective and California has plenty of room for more solar farms, even though the farm approach requires more transmission investments. It might prove beneficial if PG&E continues to respond to high fire risk conditions by shutting off power delivery.
Adding a level 2 charger to an existing home ranges from a few hundred dollars up to around $2k, depending on where you are in the US and whether or not you need a new 240 V circuit installed.
For a new home, where you can put in a 240 V circuit for it while you are doing all the rest of the wiring, with very little additional material or labor. It's only going to raise the cost of the house by a little more than the cost of the charger itself, which will be a few hundred dollars.
Someone buying a newly constructed house for whom an additional few hundred on the mortgage (which will add about $2/month to their mortgage payment) is a big deal is someone who is not anywhere near ready financially to be buying a house.
And that’s before we factor in almost all emergency home generators run on natural gas.
http://www.caiso.com/todaysoutlook/pages/supply.aspx
With renewables making up 32.7%.
When the sun drops by late afternoon, CA will be making electricity on natural gas.
Heating at night will almost be entirely natural gas. Even if you have an electric heater, the electricity will be generated using natural gas.
So what is exactly the benefit of ripping out natural gas from homes?
You need energy storage at scale at night. The only solution at night after batteries (chemical, stored water, gravity, etc.) are quickly depleted is natural gas.
Modern nuclear reactor designs could easily fill the gap. Public sentiment and the risk of building in earthquake prone geography has prevented investment in nuclear.
If new buildings being added to the building stock are built with gas, then people will still be reliant on gas to cook. If they are added with electric/induction stoves, then everyone will benefit from the grid's shift away from natural gas.
California will be burning gas 10 to 20 years from now.
Without nuclear or dramatic battery innovations, we will always burn natural gas for night time energy.
How sure of that are you? I’m not so sure but quick google says maybe not as true as you imply: https://slate.com/business/2015/09/texas-electricity-goes-ne.... Maybe région dépendant? Is that a deal breaker given power can be transported between regions?
> Battery tech
I see part of the point of this legislation is to drive innovation. We’ll never get change if we just say “it’s impossible so we have to burn fossils.” I don’t dispute any of your points really except if the policy is gradual enough it will force us to adapt and that is a good thing IMO.
Burning natural gas to produce electricity to power electric heaters at home is actually worse from a CO2 perspective than burning natural gas directly for home heating.
Requiring a 240V drop in the kitchen I could see. Makes the replacement of a gas oven with electric easier, if the homeowner wishes and an easy requirement for builders to meet.
Banning an NG connection limits choice today and is based upon a forecast for the future that may not occur in the timeframe you are expecting.
Using daytime solar excess to pump water uphill lets you get double duty out of the hydro and looks to be about the right amount of after hours energy use.
https://www.thoracic.org/patients/patient-resources/resource...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3500516/
If the rate of new construction is low, then hopefully renewables plus batteries will be able to keep up with increased nighttime demand.
Do they consider, for example, that the situation in the US is (or was for the last many years) a natural gas surplus due to the byproducts of the fracking industry? And that the gas would be burnt or flared if not sent for distribution? And that, with natural gas being better carbon-wise than coal-fired electricity, this might be a net benefit?
And that to incentivize the building of any kind of gas pipelines, it takes decades of certainty about demand?
And that household gas usage is a drop in the bucket?
The list of issues to consider goes on and on. It's not just "burning fossil fuels = bad".
CA lawmaking usually is kind of blind to second-order effects so I'm not surprised. Lawmakers have added numerous laws constraining home construction and then lament the "heart-breaking" housing crisis.
It's an interesting lesson in how to structure changes you want.
Who would support this? I think California property owners should support any and all restrictions on new homes. Who is against this? Probably a small subset of people who intend on building a home in the near future.
I'm an open-minded person, and I've installed solar and micro-hydro residential systems in the past. I'm a fan of these technologies and a carbon-free future, but I'm also highly skeptical of intelligent humans who make bold, risky predictions about massive systems and how they'd react to changes. Historically, it's gone rather poorly most of the time.
Also, for my house a winter's worth of electrical heat costs about $1,700. Propane heating costs about $1,400. If I use my woodstove and buy the wood it costs about $600. If I cut my own wood it costs about $150 for fuel and maintenance. So forcing electrical heat also amounts to a large implicit tax.
PS I grew up in a wood-heated home in Vermont and stacked cords of wood every year. Except for freezing my ass of every morning until the fire was going, I think wood heat is great. Unfortunately it does have some particulate issues in urban areas, and (related) doesn't scale well. But I'm not saying people shouldn't use it where it makes sense.
But it's also a royal pain in the ass compared to twisting the dial on a thermostat. There's a large cost in time, energy and attention.