This is the tone-deafness that ruins all efforts to actually convince people to take climate change seriously. It's extremely harmful.
Yes high efficiency heat pumps are getting better. But they aren't readily available. If they are, very few companies install/service them. No one has them in the Midwestern area I live in. They also only work down to say -20F and we do have quite a few days below that so you can't just make natural gas illegal.
Not to mention not everyone can afford it. Maybe let's focus on making them readily available and cheap instead of just banning things outright.
There also isn’t a low temperature heat pump solution that works for radiators. I’m actually really interested in heat pumps as my boiler is a few years away from end of life. But I really resent being forced to do something drastic and end up buying some shitty first generation product because some advocate in a California coastal climate says so.
If this comes to my state, I’ll hold my nose while doing it, but I’ll vote republican to stop it.
> There also isn’t a low temperature heat pump solution that works for radiators.
There are. Here's one [1] that works down to -26 Celsius (47 F below freezing!!) and connects to radiators. In practice it will also work below -26 C, since multi-zone pumps can use other rooms to balance out reliance on the external radiator.
It's also crazy efficient: at -13 C/5 F it still moves 12078.98 BTUs of heat per kWh of electricity consumed. At 10.42 cents/kWh that's nearly half the price of natural gas.
Really? Their catalogue suggests that it can connect to floor mount indoor units that replace radiators. That’s not quite the same thing.
As I understand it, for two-pipe (hydronic) radiators, and air-to-water heat pump can operate them. Chiltrix makes one for residential use. Other vendors seem to mostly offer this feature for commercial use.
For single pipe steam radiators, you need steam. I’ve never seen one of these systems that worked well, but if someone doesn’t want to replace it outright, any heat pump option will need very high output temperature.
So you'd buy a heat pump, but you don't want to buy the radiators for the heat pump? Why? If you like the look of steam radiators (and all of the burn/leak hazards that come with that), just keep the radiators and lose the steam.
The difficulty in replacing things like steam radiators is that installing ducts in an existing house is too expensive and difficult. Multi-zone heat pumps let you avoid that.
They are more limited right now although newer models have emerged in the last 3 years.
The split systems are a viable solution, but are aesthetically pretty awful. The point is that these types of retrofits are expensive and the tech is new. Now, we should be pushing lots of carrots to encourage installation. Take out the sticks later as the gas infrastructure starts to become obsolete.
To me the mandate is the problem. In my case, I’ll gladly buy as soon as it’s viable for me. But I have the means to think that way.
You've got to put this thing outside though right? So how do I keep it clear from snow? And not just a little snow. Snow that comes in 1 foot lifts day after day. I would need quite a big shelter to prevent snow drifts and give it the room it needs.
Sounds like a maintenance/snow removal nightmare compared to a natural gas boiler for hydronic heat that just works. I'd need space for a huge natural gas backup generator too.
? that's uncalled for. It's called the right tool for the job and not introducing the fucking environment into my heating system more than necessary at 200-300" of snow per year and regular -20F or -30F nights.
I would love to use a hyper efficient heat pump solution so I'm asking the questions here.
Wasn't meant to be an insult, but I suppose it is a blunt fact that could be unwelcome. If you look for solutions, you'll eventually find them (within reason). The opposite holds as well.
To be fair, as opposed to that picture most people don't install their heat pumps on their patios, but rather on the ugly 'service' side of their house where they have, you know, garbage cans, car parking etc.
We spend most of the winter night below 0F so these heat pump options don't look viable. Not to mention we have no where outside to put this thing it won't be covered in snow. Resistive heat is the only thing that seems viable and that's crazy expensive.
Sure there are. My father recently replaced his oil boiler with an air-source heat pump (from Mitsubishi). It plugs into the same hot water pipework for the radiators that the oil boiler was connected to, output temperature is around 60C. Efficiency obviously drops with temperature, but even at -20C it has a COP of around 2, finally shutting down and switching to resistive heating elements at -30C.
The part that really annoys me is after these people wear out their welcome and get sufficiently marginalized the adults will have decades less with which to tackle the problems. The opportunity costs of pretending extremists like this have workable plans worthy of consideration is large.
> The Sierra Club opposes the licensing, construction and operation of new nuclear reactors utilizing the fission process, pending:
> The dangers posed by the probable releases of tritium used by fusion plants, the problems with decommissioning these plants, and their high costs lead the Sierra Club to believe that the development of fusion reactors to generate electricity should not be pursued at this time.
The Sierra Club has always had an anti-human feel to it, starting with John Muir and his despicable racism toward the indigenous people.
Muir was a racist yes, but also he just really didn't like anyone. He was generally just a mercurial and unlikeable person. I read a biography of him, A Passion For Nature, a few years ago. I knew nothing about Muir going into the book and by the end I was ready for him to croak so I could finish the book and never think about him again.
It's hard to take them seriously with their policy prescriptions[1]. They mention that they oppose: coal power, nuclear power, hydroelectric power, and certain applications of solar power. Ok sierra club, please explain how we are going to generate power?
I see this from activists alot. They recommend some bananas policy prescription, and when the experts in that field say "that's not possible" the reply is always: "well you're the expert, just figure it out".
In large parts of New England they use heating oil, which is similar to diesel and pollutes the air more than natural gas. There are many things they could be taking on, but natural gas isn't the worst of them.
The problem with my experience in the Midwest (Michigan in particular) is that their power grid is so bad that I would lose electricity for an average of 1 week each year (the problem is so widespread that Michigan has laws in place to protect utility companies against customer claims for interruptions less than 5 days[^1]).
If you get a nasty February ice storm that cuts a power line, you can be without electric power in 0F weather for up to 5 days. I guess people can install natural gas generators for that occurrence, but that seems to be a little bit counterintuitive (also, would a gas company provide emergency-only service?). I am not sure if heat pumps can work off regular gas powered portable generators that people usually use for emergency power.
To add to this, there was a major storm last week that knocked out power for significant chunk of the Detroit area for up to three days. That's in August, mostly from wind.
These kinds of storms happen rarely if ever happen in the winter and they typically happen in the spring and summer so I’m not sure how this presents much of an issue for heating. They seem to impact rural areas much worse though.
In the northeast all my worst power outages happened during the winter. Usually from ice storms or even just an overabundance of wet snow causing tons of tree limbs to come down at once.
They can be, but in large parts of Michigan they haven't been - a quick check says 15% of power lines are buried. So any weather event that risks damage to tree limbs also risks power outages.
Burying power lines is extremely expensive - and the utilities aren't going to eat that cost, it's going to be passed right on to you! Moreover, when there are problems with underground power lines, which ironically tends to also happen in the winter due to the salt used on roadways, it's very time-consuming to resolve issues. The utilities would need 5x the crews they currently have in order to restore power in as timely a manner as they do now.
How do I know this? I work for a major utility serving the midwest. Winters are no joke in these parts. As others have noted, heat pumps are only good down to 20F. If it gets colder than that, which it frequently does, you're going to want a natural gas furnace because electric furnaces are stupid expensive to operate! This coming from a guy who works for the power company!
There's not going to be any phase-out of natural gas for decades - which is the amount of time we need to build all the nuclear generation we need to make power as cheap and abundant as we need. We can't heat our homes and power our cars with wishes and desires - we need a hard-nosed energy policy and plan of execution.
You're right - they said -20F. I didn't leave out the minus sign, I didn't even see it!, and it's interesting why. Thirty years ago my parents had a house having both a gas furnace and a heat pump that worked in tandem. They had a problem with their furnace that they didn't immediately fix because they were using the heat pump. Then they got the bill. It was nearly 3x more expensive than usual. My dad immediately got the furnace fixed.
What I recall my dad saying is when the furnace guy came out to fix the furnace my dad was talking to the furnace guy about the bill. The furnace guy said heat pumps get very inefficient below 20F. So my dad's system was designed to run the heat pump until the outside temperature got to 20F and then it would switch over to the furnace, if available. If it detected the furnace not coming on then it would continue to run the heat pump. So I've had it in my head ever since that you don't want to run a heat pump below 20F.
Are the new heat pumps different? Is it now -20F instead of 20F before your costs soar?
Yes, apparently there have been huge advances in the efficiency of heat pumps since then. And this is why ground source heat pumps are less of a thing these days: you don't need the help of that underground temperature as much.
It is still not too smart to run your heat pump below 10F. It will work, but the BTUs it can produce will be limited, right when you need a lot more because it's f*%&in' cold out.
SE Michigan has outages all year round, it's just an infrastructure problem. Before I moved, I was used to (fortunately short) DTE outages at least once a month, every computer needed a UPS or you would lose work. In Nashville I haven't had an outage without a tornado coming through (knock on wood). I remember being woken up by the UPS beeping at night all the time and I just spent four years with it right next to my bed with no issues (albeit only because I wasn't sleeping during the tornado sirens anyways).
> If you get a nasty February ice storm that cuts a power line, you can be without electric power in 0F weather for up to 5 days. I guess people can install natural gas generators for that occurrence
Why would they? They already have one. They don't have to rip it out just because they get a heat pump. Heat pumps don't go where the furnace is.
> I am not sure if heat pumps can work off regular gas powered portable generators that people usually use for emergency power.
Depends on the generator, although some heat pumps run on 120 V. More often they're like central air conditioners, washing machines, and stoves, and run on split-phase 240 [1]. 240 V generators are not as common as 120 V, but they are still very easy to find: https://www.homedepot.com/p/318061554
[1]: your house gets 2 "hot" (one positive voltage, one negative) wires and 1 neutral, with most things connected between neutral and a hot wire, with a ground to check for shorts. High power (anything over 1.4 kW) appliances get a NEMA connector between the two hot wires, and a ground to check for shorts.
They certainly can. Are you thinking heat pumps only come as mini-splits? Drop-in replacement of the furnace is likely the cheaper option when replacing an existing gas furnace over a multi-head system.
Okay? They virtually always are outside, because it's far more difficult to put a unit in a basement. Heat pumps need outside air and a furnace typically has a single 2" PVC pipe to the outside. That's very far from sufficient.
If you have a furnace it's trivial to have it left in place.
I don't think you understand what a heat pump is or how they work. Its an air conditioner that can run in reverse. So in the centralized case like we are discussing, the outside part is the compressor, the inside part does a heat exchange between the refrigerant and the air handling system and then on to the duct work.
Air is not moved from outside to inside via PVC or other method. Refrigerant (freon in older systems, more obscure names now) moves from outside to inside via a small copper pipe.
Air handlers are not heat pumps. An air handler can be put in place of a furnace, but it certainly does not have to. If you have a furnace, it's trivial to have it left in place.
I didn't say air handlers are heat pumps, I said the product of the heat pump are passed off to the air handler. But again you seem confused about basic terminology about the subject you are talking about.
> An air handler can be put in place of a furnace, but it certainly does not have to.
An air handler just moves air around, it doesn't replace a furnace. Its an essential part of a central heating / cooling system regardless of whether its attached to a heat pump, gas furnace or anything else.
I'm not sure why you keep doubling down on speaking authoritatively about something you don't understand. Why don't you read a basic intro and then you'll understand?
Heat pumps can also replace the AC heat exchanger in a home HVAC setup. It’s what we did. We’ll have gas backup for when winter sucks, but otherwise we’ll use the heat exchanger.
> If you get a nasty February ice storm that cuts a power line, you can be without electric power in 0F weather for up to 5 days
I live in Indiana and we've had power outages like this during both winter and summer. What sucks is that newer (last 25 years) gas furnaces have fancy-dancy blower motors (power vent) and if I lose electricity, I also can't run the furnace because the power vent won't work. My gas water heater was the same way. Last time it failed (they only last 10 years these days), I switched to electric because the power vent on the gas water heater was so noisy you could hear it throughout the entire house.
My house is somewhat livable in the summer heat with a power outage because I have a basement, but in winter, forget it.
Having said that, I'm not so keen on spending $10-15K to convert two gas furnaces to heat pumps.
I actually disagree, but only because I'm reading between the lines. The place for carefully outlined policy with explicit exceptions, or funding associated with grid improvements or the like go through Congress and they know that. My take is that the Sierra Club is essentially making a very public opening bid in their bargain to reduce gas heating as much as possible. In a negotiation, you don't start with what you'd settle for. You start with the most extreme position you can plausibly stake out, then give up ground inch by inch to land at something reasonable. They'll get the chance to put their evidence on the record, maybe drag some witnesses to speak on the record, score some discovery wins, force a few rulings to set some precedent. And also they can fundraise like hell off of it. It's gamemanship for sure, but I support that they're pushing in the right direction.
Can you provide some examples where non-trivial legislative or regulatory policies were changed without such bargaining games?
By the nature of simply being an issue, you always have multiple power bases and advocacy groups staked out around a bureaucracy designed to do no more than it's forced to. If you have a better way to resolve issues than with this kind of postured negotiation, that would be wonderful, but it feels like it would also be pretty darn novel.
> Some State initiatives to put MJ on the ballot were successful, and did not involve State legislature nor involve staking an extreme position.
You’re right the legislature and ballot initiatives did not take extreme positions, but those were brought forth by political groups that took the position of legalizing cannabis for adults full-stop. They’ve made incremental progress by supporting broadly acceptable and reasonable legislation towards those goals, but they made concessions to win broad support.
I don’t see how the Sierra Club is different. That said, I would like to see our political debates and process lose the gamesmanship.
To be similar, Sierra Club could take their idea and collect signatures to petition it on to ballot. Instead they are taking an extreme position which would garner few signatures.
I agree with your take. This is my honest followup question: can eliminating gas alternatives from the equation help make electric heat pumps more cheep/available?
It seems like in the short-term it could make things tricky, but long term it feels like competition in the heat pump market should result in better products and lower prices... I am not so naive as to think that government interference in a market will inevitably cause a good result, but it seems like properly targeted regulation can help trigger a market shift that is ultimately beneficial to the environment and to consumers...
Elimination of competition usually has the opposite effect. Subsidies can have the effect you describe. Heat pumps have been subsidized for some time and they have simultaneously improved leaps and bounds over a short period. This subsidy is expanded under a law just signed into effect by the president.
Even without these subsidies, heat pumps are more cost effective than natural gas in most cases. There is in fact almost no good reason to ban gas appliances at this point as they are going to decline rapidly without a ban.
The Sierra Club in general is made up of out of touch rich people. This is 100% them letting their privellege flag fly.
Edit: One thing I should've noted is that besides green house gas emissions there is a credible concern around the pollution produced by gas burning appliances. Several studies have shown a link between premature cardiovascular deaths and residential gas burning equipment. The issues are particularly pronounced among individuals with asthma. We should probably cease to use residential gas appliances in the near future but the way the market is going, a ban seems unnecessary and the imposition of such a ban would place serious burdens on the poor.
> This is the tone-deafness that ruins all efforts to actually convince people to take climate change seriously. It's extremely harmful.
It doesn't help when critics exaggerate what's being suggested. They're an issue advocacy group pushing for regulatory changes that will of course involve a long, slow transition window when actually enacted by the legislature or EPA.
They're not asking for agents in jackboots to start seizing gas furnaces tomorrow. They're playing a necessary role in getting a slow-moving regulator to start moving forward on a plan that will take a decade to gradually roll out and that will incentivize further competition and innovation in alternative solutions over the course of five years or a decade or whatever.
Its just wild that in the last decades of such abundance very little resources are put towards the practical aspects of getting people off fossil fuels - they really just preach from their podium and nothing more - and now in the early months leading into the absolute winter of hell for hundreds of millions in Europe they decide to use this kind of rhetoric at the podium (god help us if anyone or any government takes the rhetoric seriously)
> and now in the early months leading into the absolute winter of hell for hundreds of millions in Europe they decide to use this kind of rhetoric at the podium
You're referring to natural gas shortages? If you used the natural gas in europe to generate electricity instead of heat, it would go 3.6x farther with heat pumps. So your rhetoric really seems to ring hollow.
3.6x, given 50% efficient generation and transmission, would require a heat pump COP about 7.2. Unfortunately real heat pump COPs are 3 or less, meaning the gas goes 1.5x further or less. This is still great (since it saves gas and there are other sources of electric) but unfortunately it's really high monetary cost (since the electric costs about 3x the gas, so even if the heat pump were free, it costs twice as much to run; electric prices follow gas prices closely so they don't get cheaper when gas runs short). So it's a hard sell. I think they're clever devices, I like them, I will probably buy one. But they're no panacea.
It gets down to about four or five in bedrooms, six in the room I work in, 8 to 10 in rooms closer to the kitchen. Been doing this for years, no ill effects.
I love the cold and winter. I'll run outside when it is -30F with the proper clothing. But damn, we keep our house at 60F in the winter and I often wear a winter hat inside. 39F in the house is nuts. Not to mention you have to be careful not to freeze your pipes.
I would rather just burn the gas and keep the house at 17 so I can walk around wearing my preferred house garb of just an old housecoat with no belt. My extremities excluding my hands and feet get too cold below 17.
If your garb is JUST an unbelted housecoat there is indeed a risk of cold extremities and not just hands and feet. Now pardon me while I clean the "mental images" screen. I should probably have caveated my remarks with "if appropriately dressed"!
Technically I said extremities excluding my hands and feet because my hands and feet don't get cold. My nose does. What did you think I was talking about?
> You're insane... Now we waste gas just to boil idiots because all of a sudden they feel entitled to be boiled, then we bankrupt nations to subsidise this because heaven forbid anyone have to put their jacket on.
You're doing a great job reinforcing my opposition to this regulation. Just thought I'd let you know.
>> This is the tone-deafness that ruins all efforts to actually convince people to take climate change seriously. It's extremely harmful.
> They're not asking for agents in jackboots to start seizing gas furnaces tomorrow. They're playing a necessary role in getting a slow-moving regulator to start moving forward on a plan that will take a decade to gradually roll out and that will incentivize further competition and innovation in alternative solutions over the course of five years or a decade or whatever.
That's an unhelpful strawman, and it seems like the regulation would be a lot more aggressive than you describe, according to the article:
> The petition’s reading would force the EPA to set NOx standards that would effectively ban the use of natural gas in all new construction within a year after the regulation is implemented.
IMHO, current-day politics mean that any regulation like this will likely be rammed through quickly when one party has control, because a slow rollout will invite repeal by the other party.
> a plan that will ... incentivize further competition and innovation in alternative solutions over the course of five years or a decade or whatever.
Don't be fooled. If the past is any guide, the "innovation in alternative solutions" will still likely still be worse than what we have now (e.g. efficiency guidelines mean my dishwasher now either leaves my dishes either wet or dry-ish and soapy-tasting, because the dryer was crippled, forcing the use of a "rinse agent."
I tried to get a heat pump this summer when I got AC installed. The AC systems all worked with my existing furnace, but the dealer didn't have any heat pumps that could supplement my existing furnace. It was a sad moment for me when I had to give up on that.
Modern ones work, like you said, down to -20F. One important caveat however is that they don't not-work below -20F, they just fall back to "emergency heat" aka resistive coils. While of course emergency-heat uses far more power that power can still be green.
The biggest problem remaining is cost, $20k+ for a 24 SEER heat pump is just bonkers.
Nice. I hope this goes through, although there's approximately a 0% chance that it will, or if it does, conservative justices will likely strike it down pretty quickly.
Ok, lets think this through a bit. About 48% of homes in the US are heated with natural gas. This is mostly because it is the cheapest option available in many areas. The immediate result of banning natural gas heating is more expensive heating for 48% of homes. The longer term result is more expensive home ownership. More expensive home ownership means less people able to afford a home.
People are going to use the cheapest option to heat their home. If you truly want people to switch from natural gas then make a cheaper option. Forcing change is rarely the best course. Make something cheaper or easier and people will change on their own. You don't see many horse and buggies or gas lights around much anymore. They were supplanted by better options not forced.
I'm in a new home partly heated (thanks to the gas company subsidizing installs) by natural gas, it's a fleece of the Monopoly power granted by my state.
In the southeast, my furnace is used 3 months a year, my highest bill is $50 in the last 12 months. But in ~9 months of 0 therm usage, the minimum bill is $30. (That's right, 3/5 of every home in my region is likely to overhead)
But it's not just a fleece from the billing and the rate. Maintaining the infrastructure is supported by my property taxes and state income taxes (and the additional overhead of unneeded infrastructure in road maintenance, disasters, or simple things like utility marking.
Then there are other fleeces involved that are strictly job creation. "De-regulation" where every year I have to play a game to get the best teaser rate to get the same gas (that might be traded differently) (when the state commissioner can require rates be a certain point in the market as they do of the - same company by the way - electric infrastructure.) So I have to pay with my time, and in many ways money, just to play this game.
The heat is quick, the gas stove is slower than induction (I have a single induction unit I use most of the time), and the fireplace is comforting.
Please explain to me how an electric heat pump - even one designed to be highly efficient in a cold climate - is supposed to keep me from freezing to death when my power goes out every winter from an ice storm taking down trees (which take down my power lines) when it's -17F outside. If I didn't have a propane furnace I'd have to fly to Florida every winter.
Mine also uses electricity but a very small amount. When the power goes out I use a car battery, with a mini generator or my car to recharge. Also use it for my well water pump. (Afaik I'd need substantially more power for an electric heat pump for 2 weeks)
Interesting. My well water pump is 220v and draws quite a few amps. At least on start. I don't think I could run it off my "backup generation" (12amp 120v outlet coming out of my Outlander PHEV). It's also hard wired right to the panel.
Some pumps can be connected to some sort of soft start circuit. Others, especially three phase pumps, can run off a VFD that will start it quite gently. (And those VFDs run off single phase power just fine — they create a third phase internally.) And some pumps (e.g. Grundfos SQE) have their own drives down the hole.
Doesn't the heating system need electricity as well, for the electronics, fans/pumps etc.? Or is it more like a gas stove with a simple valve to open the gas line, and manual lighting?
> Please explain to me how an electric heat pump - even one designed to be highly efficient in a cold climate - is supposed to keep me from freezing to death when my power goes out every winter from an ice storm taking down trees
The warm fuzzy feeling you get inside from knowing you're saving the planet should keep you warm enough. /s
> If I didn't have a propane furnace I'd have to fly to Florida every winter.
Keep the propane. Use it 5 days every year. You still have 95% of the reduction in CO2 and pollution that a heat pump brings, and reliable heat. Nobody is saying you have to be totally reliant on the heat pump. They don't even work the same way.
This is like refusing to get an air conditioner because you'll have to get rid of your heater. KEEP BOTH! You aren't even really replacing your heating, you're replacing your air conditioner, because a heat pump is an air conditioner. It just also happens to be incredibly good at keeping your home warm as well as cool.
In the US, use of residential natural gas has stayed nearly constant for decades. Natural gas use for electricity generation on the other hand has nearly gone up by 4 times in the past 40 years:
Restricting or eliminating home usage of natural gas seems identical in its relative ineffectiveness as restricting home water use while ignoring large agricultural users.
These are very different because of the end goal. A world where we don't drive our food and eventually ourselves extinct is a world with vastly less gas use, to the point where the uses you highlighted (both electricity generation and home heating) are both eliminated entirely while I assure you we're not going to stop using water. We need to change how it's assigned, who gets access and to how much, but we're not going to eliminate it.
So then the question is, if we're eliminating all gas usage, why do A before B rather than B before A and the answer to that is very simple. Electricity is fungible, and it's much harder to change all the millions of individual home and small business installations, so you should begin with that first or you'll never get done.
This makes all of zero sense, especially for a forum populated by engineer-types who are familiar with turning abstract ideas into tangible and highly scalable applications.
A subset of users who use a ton in % terms, and can be targeted cleanly and clearly to change use, translates into a large % decrease with the minimal amount of work.
You are suggesting a waterfall-style approach. Toil for years because it’s harder?
If we want to get rid of all gas furnaces within 20 years, we have to start now if we want to do it the cheapest way. Furnaces have a 20 year lifespan, so if we install any more gas furnaces in the future, we'll have to rip them out before end of life. Instead, whenever a furnace needs replacement, put in a heat exchanger.
Gas generators OTOH have a 50 year lifespan. They'll have to be ripped out prematurely.
You're proving the parent's point. Electricity is fungible so it will be easier to replace natural gas used for electricity than the millions of homes heated by it.
Actually it makes a lot more sense than may appear at first glance.
Heat pumps are incredibly efficient. So much so that burning natural gas to generate electricity to power a heat pump is more efficient than burning the gas directly to create heat.
So even if we were to discount renewables entirely and change all natural gas furnaces to heat pumped powered by natural gas on the grid, we'd still come out ahead.
I am all for heat pumps, but this seems a bit extreme. They want this to be enacted within one year? They want a gas stove to be regulated the same way as a power plant?
At a time when we _badly_ need to build more housing that people can actually afford, artificially raising the cost of building new homes also seems problematic. The rhetoric used by the republican lawmakers opposed to it does sound like the usual anti-regulation talking points, but I have to agree with them in this case. This would make life a lot harder and more expensive for a lot of people and I don't think "a few environmental groups" is enough consensus for the entire country.
They're starting off by stating their ultimate goal (ban natural gas), but will end up walking it back as a "compromise" in order to seem not as extreme.
Would it actually raise the cost? Yes, a heat pump is more expensive than a gas furnace, but for an all-electric home you save the cost of a gas hookup. Hell, when building new neighborhoods, can save infrastructure costs by not building out gas infrastructure. Also, depending on what kind of heat pump you install it can also function as an AC unit, so you don't need to install separate AC.
Besides, if you're concerned about affordable housing, wouldn't (in the US at least) the first priority be to kill single-family zoning?
"The petition, if implemented by the EPA, would require homeowners to replace gas appliances when they break down or must be replaced with expensive new heat pump technology."
Assuming a heat pump lasts about 10 years, Has there been any analysis of the supply chain dependencies or repairability of heat pumps? I've asked this elsewhere and have had trouble figuring this out.
Saying this as someone currently fixing an old house, made haphazard 'kotatsu' heating setups, seen plenty of videos and articles evangelizing heat pumps, yet feel like there's little asked about the long term resilience or repairability of a given tech despite the greater efficiency.
I think they last a lot longer than 10 years. I am not in the US but have been looking at air to water heat pumps and several of them are sold with 15 years warranty.
Residential heat pumps are estimated to last 20-25 years; with typical services being capacitor changes, electromechanical contactors, and coil cleaning.
Digital thermostats from 15 years ago prevent the most common compressor issues. Smart thermostats can now detect symptoms proactively.
In the last 15 years, we've seen technological advances in compressor, gas, and electronics (as well as air to ground and air to water). And better calculations for sizing and air quality.
This feels like something that really only makes sense as part of a greater plan. Like, if the government announced they were phasing out fossil fuel home heating by providing heat pumps in new construction for cheap, while simultaneously having a plan to expand the power grid to accommodate the new power requirements, that would be fine. But this feels really slapdash and is likely to have unanticipated side effects.
In the US, there is a recent "inflation reduction act" that passed (< 1 month ago, after 2 years of discussion) in reconciliation that offers tax credits for heat pump, heat pump water heaters, solar panels, and electric cars - subsidizes renewable energy sources - and to some chagrin, subsidizes traditional electrical generation energy sources.
Up to 8k rebate for heat pumps too, which is enough to push middle class eco conscious people to spend the extra money. Although for colder climates, installs can be nearly 3x as much as nat gas, so drop in the bucket.
Also doesn't account for costs related to panel upgrades that often needs to happen in older homes to handle all these new electric appliances.
I want induction, but no 240 to range because it's gas. It's insulated well (every vertical wire well sealed) so getting new electrical in means significant access holes to be made.
Similar with hot water heater, brand new, so I don't feel like it's reasonable to go buy a new hybrid.
How about first tackling the low hanging fruit like
a) private jet flights
b) cruise ships
c) methane production by agriculture
rather than again putting all the responsibility on the working/middle classes?
In general I agree with you. Pretty much any regulation meant to target the rich ends up coming back to bite the middle class somehow. That being said, after thinking about it for awhile, I have really struggled to come up with a scenario where there is negative consequences for common folks caused by more regulation of private jets. Worst thing I can think of is the disruption of aerospace jobs that it would cause.
How about moving the working/middle class from single family homes to apartment complexes and starting using public transportation instead of cars? That would certainly be more energy efficient than cancelling a few private jet flights.
As long as they pay full cost that includes offsetting emissions, why not? How about offering them an affordable alternative to what’s considered luxury in many parts of the world?
There is the instinct that must be contended against with all our might: Removing choice.
"Make" everyone live in an apartment, because they shouldn't have the choice. "Make" everyone give up their personal transportation (mobility). "Make" everyone switch to solar or geothermal.
Substitute "make" with "force" and you'll have the correct understanding of what kind of government mechanisms we'd be empowering to achieve these ends. Removing choice is the wrong instinct.
Working to price external costs in, so they get factored in to choices, can sway the choices, but you're not forcing people, or making a way for one group of people to force some other group of people to certain actions.
Who’s removing choice? Do you have a lot of livable cities with a great public transportation system, where people don’t want to live in? Or you have a zoned suburbia with NIMBY lobby and gated communities, where people barely can afford to live in?
When was the last time you took a bus or travelled by train?
> How about moving the working/middle class from single family homes to apartment complexes and starting using public transportation instead of cars? That would certainly be more energy efficient than cancelling a few private jet flights.
How about we move healthtech CTOs into dungeons deep underground, where no climate control is neccessary; and provide them a single terminal to continue working and a diet of 2000 kcal/day of the cheapest, most climate friendly vegan food? No spices -- too many food miles.
You are certainly overreacting to a proposal to live the same comfortable, affordable and energy-efficient lifestyle as the author. Why are you so triggered by that?
> ...a proposal to live the same comfortable, affordable and energy-efficient lifestyle as the author.
I figured I'd get a response like that.
> Why are you so triggered by that?
I'm not triggered. You were suggesting to coercively force major lifestyle choices (that just happen to be yours) onto other people (which "how about moving the the working/middle class..." clearly communicates). If you think that's fine, then you should give your empathy some exercise, and think about being treated similarly yourself.
So you do not understand the difference between oppression and regulation, do you? One thing is to lock up people in Auschwitz, another one is to require them to separate trash or to stop smoking in public places. Building livable cities where people could afford renting or buying a flat for less than $1000 is certainly not oppression. Yes, you cannot put a fancy big grill on a balcony to keep up with Joneses, sorry. But being able to pay the bills and contribute less to a climate change, would be worth it, right?
Oh, come on. What else would that be? Some crazy stuff like Soviet style forced relocation as a hyperbole for „don’t touch my private jet“? Einfamilienhaussiedlungsverbot?
I bet you haven’t read other comments in thus thread and have never lived in a modern city with decent public transportation and welfare. Quality of life in Berlin or some random small town in Germany is certainly better for people with low income than in American suburbia, yet the working class does not have this choice The elites have already decided on what American lifestyle should look like, with all those highways cutting off cities in halves, zoning rules etc. So, go on, tell me more about the “choice”.
While I agree with your sentiment. Whataboutism can always find a better target. What about tackling coal plants first? What about China reducing their emissions first? That line of reasoning will only achieve keeping the status quo in place.
I hope we can make the transition as fair as possible but with the limited time we have left, we have to push on all fronts at the same time.
Making sure you factor in the opportunity cost of a particular course of action when alternative actions exist is not the same as whataboutism.
There is a limit (for better or worse) to the throughput of political actions (at least in a representative government). Care must be taken when deciding which priority to pursue.
Many middle class European families travel to exotic far-away destinations by flight. It would be political suicide in Europe to make flying more expensive than it already is.
Many people love to travel to exotic far-away destinations in the US too. Many of these people look down their nose at people in the suburbs who drive large SUVs as being wasteful. People always want others to do the sacrificing.
International regulation requires global coordination. And there's always going to be some country that uses non-compliance as a way to make money. This makes A and B very difficult and expensive to tackle.
And C will never happen because big-agra is incredibly powerful.
By contrast, the EPA is a single entity that's powerful enough to enact and enforce changes across the entire USA.
I feel like people don't realize just how effective EPA initiatives are in this space. Energy Star regulations have drastically increased the efficiency of appliances all across the world. And have done so in only 30 years.
> We are facing the worst energy crisis since Jimmy Carter, yet these inflation-loving leftists are more worried about how to take away Americans’ reliable heating than they are about creating viable solutions.
It is pretty insane how debating a hot topic is now impossible. They are not even able to consider that an opposing political force might have different priorities or might simply be misguided. They just want to steal heating from americans because they are evil.
How about making an alternative to natural gas that is cheaper to heat a home instead of making everybody's life worse by forcing your morals into law.
Unfortunately what will happen instead is natural gas is going to become just-as or almost-as expensive as oil or electric heat.
Honestly if I could go back 10 years when I replaced my oil furnace with gas, I'd definitely attempt to install a ground source heat pump instead. With the gas change it "paid for itself" in about 5 years, and I'd still be waiting for the ground source system, but I'd be frankly more future proof.
I can generate my own electricity with solar. I can't make my own natural gas.
Can confirm. Over here 20 years ago you would be laughed out of the room if you suggested to use an air-source heat pump to heat a house. Nowadays they are the norm, and ground source are a minority. It also helps that building insulation standards have crept upwards, so you don't need as much energy to heat a modern building, making it a win for the lower capital cost of an air source system.
I have been thinking a lot about your last statement. An anaerobic septic system would generate natural gas for you. Many less developed parts of the world use such systems to generate cooking and heating fuel. But, if you have modern appliances designed for clean natural gas you will also need a small scale gas cleaning system. There are no off the shelf small scale gas cleaning systems so you have to make your own.
Then there is the issue that anaerobic septics a illegal in most areas since they stink when vented to atmosphere.
This is the equivalent of Californian towns banning natural gas at the same time that electrical power goes off for multiple hours or even days during heat waves.
Like other commenters, I wouldn't support this ban.
With that said...
I went to the Pickathon music festival last month (near Portland). The festival requires that all food from vendors be served in a reusable wide/shallow plastic bowl. Put the dirty bowl in a bin, and get a token for the next food purchase. Same idea with a tin cup, but attendees hold onto the cup (it comes with a carabiner). No single-use plastic allowed. Friends and I found the system easy and pleasant. A festival founder said in an interview that he hasn't heard complaints. He said other festivals have tried making this an option, but it didn't get traction.
The point is... sometimes it's easier for people to adjust to a new hard requirement, vs. swimming up-stream in a society that's very slow to adapt (because we're overwhelmed and status quo is known and relatively safe).
The difference here is that the festival made it harder for the vendors, not the consumers. People can still get their food. To make it analogous to banning natural gas, imagine if the festival banned plastic utensils and told everyone they had to buy their own, and they had to be a very specific kind that was expensive.
I’m all in favor of what the festival did though. I hate how much trash large gatherings can produce.
I agree. A successful natural-gas ban would require impeccable execution (with huge public investment). I wouldn't trust federal gov't or state gov'ts to pull that off.
Natural gas is not required for anything. In particular, it's not required to back up renewables. It may currently be cheapest for doing that, but it's not required for it, and alternatives such as batteries and hydrogen would be affordable (and cheaper than nuclear).
You insinuated (by the leading question) that it was an "integral component of the electricity generation required". In what sense is that not saying it's required? "Integral" used in this sense means "essential". That is, without it, there would not be electricity generation.
If your point is just "natural gas is currently used for electricity generation", then that's no argument against using heat pumps. I'll add that you get more heating from using NG combined cycle + a modern home heat pump than you'd get just burning the NG in a home furnace.
In practice it's not going to push it over the line, especially with modern heat pumps, which having amazingly good COP even at very low temperature.
Gas-fired heat pumps might still be more efficient (or might not), as one is also effectively capturing and using the waste heat from the generation of work from the gas.
I don't have an equation on hand to compare costs given a COP but I'm not even seeing any heat pumps that work down to -30F. That's kind of a no go in my area. The record low is -48F
Looking at the minimum outside temperature is not what you should do when computing the efficiency of the system. You look at the efficiency suitably averaged over the year. Most of the time you will not be anywhere close to -30 F.
At that point you fall back to resistive backup. The overall efficiency averaged over time should still be good.
Why are you talking about 0 F now instead of -30 F? Modern heat pumps can work just fine at 0 F. If you find one that doesn't, then don't buy it, get a better one.
I'm talking about 0F because you brought up the average.
Regardless. Night time temps fluctuate at the bottom of the COP range and then might even need resistive when the heating demand is the absolute greatest. Plus you would need to build an outdoor shelter for the outside unit to handle snow. Then you have to hope the power grid holds up to all these people on resistive power. You can't just look at the happy path of.. well on average it works out great. The system seems to get quite complicated in extreme environments.
I agree with most of the comments about how ineffective this would be and the numerous problems it would cause but to provide some balance this is not some edict, or even law. Two dozen organizations "petitioned" the EPA. This is the equivalent of sending a strongly worded letter saying, "Could you pretty please do this?". It can and probably will go straight into the trash.
These are environmental organizations, of course they sent a letter. That's what they do. They'll also probably get a letter from all the heat pump manufacturers saying they're cool with it, and other letters from people selling natural gas and gas furnaces. I'm sure they'd like you to stop cutting down trees and that ain't going to happen either.
If this petition was to ban the general cutting and burning of wood for cooking and heating, we would all laugh because the downsides of powering our lifestyles that way are so obvious to us today.
Some people do use wood for heating (in a wood-burning stove for example) but those are rare exceptions that either make sense contextually (a cabin far from infrastructure) or as a sort of aesthetic experience, like playing your favorite album on vinyl instead of Spotify.
But we all know why we should not heat, say, every house in Chicago primarily by cutting and burning trees.
I think folks in the future will feel the same way about pulling a bunch of gas out of the ground and individually burning that in our basements, closets, or kitchens. Furnaces are, let’s face it, very old school, dirty and poorly optimized technologies. I can literally see the blue flames through gaps in the metal when my furnace is on, and it’s a nice new high-efficiency model that is less than a decade old. I have carbon monoxide alarms in my bedrooms. Great.
Sure, this petition is a blunt instrument that would cause havoc if implemented as written. But the thing about transitions is that you have to start somewhere or it will never happen. Can we agree that phasing out gas makes sense? Even if this specific petition is flawed.
As far as I know, nobody banned wood stoves in the US in order to transition to gas. People transitioned to the better option of gas themselves. As it is now, gas is a better option than electric not just for heat but for other appliances too (cooking, drying, hot water). This is why you want to ban gas. When/if electric appliances become better than gas people will switch to them naturally, without any need for regulation. The same way they switched from horses to cars and from burning wood to burning gas.
Yeah, you’re right that there is not a national blanket ban on burning wood for heat. But there were (and still are) a lot of regulations that made gas and electric more attractive than wood for heating.
There are national emissions standards for residential wood burning appliances, and in some cases state as well. In addition many localities have restrictions on wood burning and can issue temporary blanket bans based on air quality measurements.
The development of this regulation went hand-in-hand with a broader cultural awareness of the importance of air quality (indoor and outdoor)—and a desire to not cut down all the nice forests around the country. So wood has suffered from a source restriction as well.
This isn’t as extreme as some of the comments suggest. The UK is already expected to soft-ban the installation of natural gas heating in all new properties from 2025, and the sale of gas boilers from 2035.
HN is supposed to be a place of discourse and problem solving. I'm not a heat system scholar. Are there any experts on this matter who would be able to point me toward figures and data regarding:
- electricity sources for heating
- percentage of emissions coming from home heating via natural gas vs coal-originating electric heaters
- efficiency of progress over the years, expected trajectory
- predictions for how this will all actually play out, without hyperbole
> percentage of emissions coming from home heating via natural gas vs coal-originating electric heaters
Surely you mean relative emissions, not percent. Natural gas creates 53 kg of CO2 per mmBTU. A good heat pump (for instance: https://www.fujitsu-general.com/us/products/vrf/j4/aou60rlav...) has a COP of 3.6+, meaning 3.6 kWh of heat per kWh of electricity. Alternately, 81.4+ kWh per mmBTU.
Any state with a carbon intensity below 1,435 lbs CO2 per MWh will emit less CO2 using a heat pump rather than natural gas. Six states have higher carbon intensities: Utah, Indiana, Missouri, Wyoming, Kentucky and West Virginia.
In the state with the lowest carbon intensity, Washington, 1 mmBTU of natural gas will emit 7.21x as much CO2 as 1 mmBTU from a heat pump.
> efficiency of progress over the years, expected trajectory
Heat pumps are already half the price of gas heating, per BTU. The carbon intensity in those 6 states will rapidly decrease as natural gas outcompetes coal. In 5 years it's likely every state will have <1435 carbon intensity.
The supreme court just slapped down the EPA for trying to overstep their authority. Regardless of the merits of banning natural gas for heating, this is pure grandstanding because they know the EPA cannot do this.
On the merits, requiring replacement with a different type of unit is foolish policy and not the right starting point. As it stands now, new houses are still being built with natural gas. Eliminating that would be a bigger win, and twenty years from now you can work on phasing out what already exists.
The IRA addressed that ruling by formally stating that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are pollutants. This grants the EPA the authority that SCOTUS said they were lacking.
So, you should have said the EPA "could not do this, but now they can."
As an aside, that is going to have some weird unforeseen effects at low levels because it means that almost every car and every dwelling or heated structure emits "pollutants" and there's god knows how many other laws that they therefore become subject to.
Except that these CO2 emissions are exactly balanced by CO2 absorption by the plants that produced our food.
If you are objecting to food produced directly from fossil fuels, or methane emissions in agriculture, then yes those are valid targets to be addressed.
If you are a member of the Sierra Club, now is a good time to consider revoking your membership. Natural gas is a great source of energy and as we will soon see in Europe, not easily replaced. Europe faces an economic depression because its supply natural gas has been intentionally cut off. This is not a serious proposal today.
> To cancel with Sierra Club directly, send them an email with your request at member.care@sierraclub.org. It is recommended to include as much information as possible, such as your membership ID, account information, and anything else considered relevant.
Are they going to pay to have my gas furnace replaced with a heat pump and buy me a new range? (as a side note: I prefer gas ranges over electric and induction in my cooking experience) Otherwise I'm going to freeze and go broke in Upstate NY.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] threadYes high efficiency heat pumps are getting better. But they aren't readily available. If they are, very few companies install/service them. No one has them in the Midwestern area I live in. They also only work down to say -20F and we do have quite a few days below that so you can't just make natural gas illegal.
Not to mention not everyone can afford it. Maybe let's focus on making them readily available and cheap instead of just banning things outright.
There also isn’t a low temperature heat pump solution that works for radiators. I’m actually really interested in heat pumps as my boiler is a few years away from end of life. But I really resent being forced to do something drastic and end up buying some shitty first generation product because some advocate in a California coastal climate says so.
If this comes to my state, I’ll hold my nose while doing it, but I’ll vote republican to stop it.
There are. Here's one [1] that works down to -26 Celsius (47 F below freezing!!) and connects to radiators. In practice it will also work below -26 C, since multi-zone pumps can use other rooms to balance out reliance on the external radiator.
It's also crazy efficient: at -13 C/5 F it still moves 12078.98 BTUs of heat per kWh of electricity consumed. At 10.42 cents/kWh that's nearly half the price of natural gas.
[1]: https://www.fujitsu-general.com/us/products/vrf/j4/aou60rlav...
As I understand it, for two-pipe (hydronic) radiators, and air-to-water heat pump can operate them. Chiltrix makes one for residential use. Other vendors seem to mostly offer this feature for commercial use.
For single pipe steam radiators, you need steam. I’ve never seen one of these systems that worked well, but if someone doesn’t want to replace it outright, any heat pump option will need very high output temperature.
The difficulty in replacing things like steam radiators is that installing ducts in an existing house is too expensive and difficult. Multi-zone heat pumps let you avoid that.
The split systems are a viable solution, but are aesthetically pretty awful. The point is that these types of retrofits are expensive and the tech is new. Now, we should be pushing lots of carrots to encourage installation. Take out the sticks later as the gas infrastructure starts to become obsolete.
To me the mandate is the problem. In my case, I’ll gladly buy as soon as it’s viable for me. But I have the means to think that way.
I would love to use a hyper efficient heat pump solution so I'm asking the questions here.
Put it on a stand.
https://www.arcticheatpumps.com/images/2021/03/31/standinact...
Put it just under your roofline, if you like. There's no reason you can't put these things six feet in the air.
You don't actually care, you're just moving goalposts.
We spend most of the winter night below 0F so these heat pump options don't look viable. Not to mention we have no where outside to put this thing it won't be covered in snow. Resistive heat is the only thing that seems viable and that's crazy expensive.
> We spend most of the winter night below 0F so these heat pump options don't look viable.
The heat pump does not stop working or turn off at -15 F. It reaches COP=1. It still warms your house, just not more efficiently than resistive heat.
Your house also stores warmth, and if insulated well it will not become cold during whatever period the temperature drops below -25 F.
Failing both of those, just keep whatever heating you have right now. That's all you have to do.
> Not to mention we have no where outside to put this thing it won't be covered in snow.
You do. Put it on a stand. Hang it on a wall if you like. Put it on the roof. It does not need to sit on the ground.
Can't you use a heat pump to warm water in a boiler, and then pump hot water through a baseboard radiator heating system?
Of course, most houses aren't set up for this. Just curious if it's a workable solution, or if I'm overlooking some problem.
https://group.vattenfall.com/uk/newsroom/pressreleases/2022/...
> The Sierra Club opposes the licensing, construction and operation of new nuclear reactors utilizing the fission process, pending:
> The dangers posed by the probable releases of tritium used by fusion plants, the problems with decommissioning these plants, and their high costs lead the Sierra Club to believe that the development of fusion reactors to generate electricity should not be pursued at this time.
The Sierra Club has always had an anti-human feel to it, starting with John Muir and his despicable racism toward the indigenous people.
I see this from activists alot. They recommend some bananas policy prescription, and when the experts in that field say "that's not possible" the reply is always: "well you're the expert, just figure it out".
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Club
If you get a nasty February ice storm that cuts a power line, you can be without electric power in 0F weather for up to 5 days. I guess people can install natural gas generators for that occurrence, but that seems to be a little bit counterintuitive (also, would a gas company provide emergency-only service?). I am not sure if heat pumps can work off regular gas powered portable generators that people usually use for emergency power.
[1]: https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/mpsc/consu...
How do I know this? I work for a major utility serving the midwest. Winters are no joke in these parts. As others have noted, heat pumps are only good down to 20F. If it gets colder than that, which it frequently does, you're going to want a natural gas furnace because electric furnaces are stupid expensive to operate! This coming from a guy who works for the power company!
There's not going to be any phase-out of natural gas for decades - which is the amount of time we need to build all the nuclear generation we need to make power as cheap and abundant as we need. We can't heat our homes and power our cars with wishes and desires - we need a hard-nosed energy policy and plan of execution.
Others said no such thing. Did you leave out the minus sign?
What I recall my dad saying is when the furnace guy came out to fix the furnace my dad was talking to the furnace guy about the bill. The furnace guy said heat pumps get very inefficient below 20F. So my dad's system was designed to run the heat pump until the outside temperature got to 20F and then it would switch over to the furnace, if available. If it detected the furnace not coming on then it would continue to run the heat pump. So I've had it in my head ever since that you don't want to run a heat pump below 20F.
Are the new heat pumps different? Is it now -20F instead of 20F before your costs soar?
This guy gets really excited about heat pumps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFEHFsO-XSI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43XKfuptnik
Why would they? They already have one. They don't have to rip it out just because they get a heat pump. Heat pumps don't go where the furnace is.
> I am not sure if heat pumps can work off regular gas powered portable generators that people usually use for emergency power.
Depends on the generator, although some heat pumps run on 120 V. More often they're like central air conditioners, washing machines, and stoves, and run on split-phase 240 [1]. 240 V generators are not as common as 120 V, but they are still very easy to find: https://www.homedepot.com/p/318061554
[1]: your house gets 2 "hot" (one positive voltage, one negative) wires and 1 neutral, with most things connected between neutral and a hot wire, with a ground to check for shorts. High power (anything over 1.4 kW) appliances get a NEMA connector between the two hot wires, and a ground to check for shorts.
They certainly can. Are you thinking heat pumps only come as mini-splits? Drop-in replacement of the furnace is likely the cheaper option when replacing an existing gas furnace over a multi-head system.
If you have a furnace it's trivial to have it left in place.
Air is not moved from outside to inside via PVC or other method. Refrigerant (freon in older systems, more obscure names now) moves from outside to inside via a small copper pipe.
> An air handler can be put in place of a furnace, but it certainly does not have to.
An air handler just moves air around, it doesn't replace a furnace. Its an essential part of a central heating / cooling system regardless of whether its attached to a heat pump, gas furnace or anything else.
I'm not sure why you keep doubling down on speaking authoritatively about something you don't understand. Why don't you read a basic intro and then you'll understand?
> They certainly can.
I am responding to what you said.
I live in Indiana and we've had power outages like this during both winter and summer. What sucks is that newer (last 25 years) gas furnaces have fancy-dancy blower motors (power vent) and if I lose electricity, I also can't run the furnace because the power vent won't work. My gas water heater was the same way. Last time it failed (they only last 10 years these days), I switched to electric because the power vent on the gas water heater was so noisy you could hear it throughout the entire house.
My house is somewhat livable in the summer heat with a power outage because I have a basement, but in winter, forget it.
Having said that, I'm not so keen on spending $10-15K to convert two gas furnaces to heat pumps.
By the nature of simply being an issue, you always have multiple power bases and advocacy groups staked out around a bureaucracy designed to do no more than it's forced to. If you have a better way to resolve issues than with this kind of postured negotiation, that would be wonderful, but it feels like it would also be pretty darn novel.
Sierra Club seems to be pandering to their donor base.
You’re right the legislature and ballot initiatives did not take extreme positions, but those were brought forth by political groups that took the position of legalizing cannabis for adults full-stop. They’ve made incremental progress by supporting broadly acceptable and reasonable legislation towards those goals, but they made concessions to win broad support.
I don’t see how the Sierra Club is different. That said, I would like to see our political debates and process lose the gamesmanship.
It seems like in the short-term it could make things tricky, but long term it feels like competition in the heat pump market should result in better products and lower prices... I am not so naive as to think that government interference in a market will inevitably cause a good result, but it seems like properly targeted regulation can help trigger a market shift that is ultimately beneficial to the environment and to consumers...
Even without these subsidies, heat pumps are more cost effective than natural gas in most cases. There is in fact almost no good reason to ban gas appliances at this point as they are going to decline rapidly without a ban.
The Sierra Club in general is made up of out of touch rich people. This is 100% them letting their privellege flag fly.
Edit: One thing I should've noted is that besides green house gas emissions there is a credible concern around the pollution produced by gas burning appliances. Several studies have shown a link between premature cardiovascular deaths and residential gas burning equipment. The issues are particularly pronounced among individuals with asthma. We should probably cease to use residential gas appliances in the near future but the way the market is going, a ban seems unnecessary and the imposition of such a ban would place serious burdens on the poor.
It doesn't help when critics exaggerate what's being suggested. They're an issue advocacy group pushing for regulatory changes that will of course involve a long, slow transition window when actually enacted by the legislature or EPA.
They're not asking for agents in jackboots to start seizing gas furnaces tomorrow. They're playing a necessary role in getting a slow-moving regulator to start moving forward on a plan that will take a decade to gradually roll out and that will incentivize further competition and innovation in alternative solutions over the course of five years or a decade or whatever.
You're referring to natural gas shortages? If you used the natural gas in europe to generate electricity instead of heat, it would go 3.6x farther with heat pumps. So your rhetoric really seems to ring hollow.
You're doing a great job reinforcing my opposition to this regulation. Just thought I'd let you know.
> They're not asking for agents in jackboots to start seizing gas furnaces tomorrow. They're playing a necessary role in getting a slow-moving regulator to start moving forward on a plan that will take a decade to gradually roll out and that will incentivize further competition and innovation in alternative solutions over the course of five years or a decade or whatever.
That's an unhelpful strawman, and it seems like the regulation would be a lot more aggressive than you describe, according to the article:
> The petition’s reading would force the EPA to set NOx standards that would effectively ban the use of natural gas in all new construction within a year after the regulation is implemented.
IMHO, current-day politics mean that any regulation like this will likely be rammed through quickly when one party has control, because a slow rollout will invite repeal by the other party.
> a plan that will ... incentivize further competition and innovation in alternative solutions over the course of five years or a decade or whatever.
Don't be fooled. If the past is any guide, the "innovation in alternative solutions" will still likely still be worse than what we have now (e.g. efficiency guidelines mean my dishwasher now either leaves my dishes either wet or dry-ish and soapy-tasting, because the dryer was crippled, forcing the use of a "rinse agent."
The biggest problem remaining is cost, $20k+ for a 24 SEER heat pump is just bonkers.
People are going to use the cheapest option to heat their home. If you truly want people to switch from natural gas then make a cheaper option. Forcing change is rarely the best course. Make something cheaper or easier and people will change on their own. You don't see many horse and buggies or gas lights around much anymore. They were supplanted by better options not forced.
In the southeast, my furnace is used 3 months a year, my highest bill is $50 in the last 12 months. But in ~9 months of 0 therm usage, the minimum bill is $30. (That's right, 3/5 of every home in my region is likely to overhead)
But it's not just a fleece from the billing and the rate. Maintaining the infrastructure is supported by my property taxes and state income taxes (and the additional overhead of unneeded infrastructure in road maintenance, disasters, or simple things like utility marking.
Then there are other fleeces involved that are strictly job creation. "De-regulation" where every year I have to play a game to get the best teaser rate to get the same gas (that might be traded differently) (when the state commissioner can require rates be a certain point in the market as they do of the - same company by the way - electric infrastructure.) So I have to pay with my time, and in many ways money, just to play this game.
The heat is quick, the gas stove is slower than induction (I have a single induction unit I use most of the time), and the fireplace is comforting.
The warm fuzzy feeling you get inside from knowing you're saving the planet should keep you warm enough. /s
Keep the propane. Use it 5 days every year. You still have 95% of the reduction in CO2 and pollution that a heat pump brings, and reliable heat. Nobody is saying you have to be totally reliant on the heat pump. They don't even work the same way.
This is like refusing to get an air conditioner because you'll have to get rid of your heater. KEEP BOTH! You aren't even really replacing your heating, you're replacing your air conditioner, because a heat pump is an air conditioner. It just also happens to be incredibly good at keeping your home warm as well as cool.
Reliable electricity is hard, and we’ll need it more and more as we travel down our increasingly electric future.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/use-of-natur...
Restricting or eliminating home usage of natural gas seems identical in its relative ineffectiveness as restricting home water use while ignoring large agricultural users.
So then the question is, if we're eliminating all gas usage, why do A before B rather than B before A and the answer to that is very simple. Electricity is fungible, and it's much harder to change all the millions of individual home and small business installations, so you should begin with that first or you'll never get done.
A subset of users who use a ton in % terms, and can be targeted cleanly and clearly to change use, translates into a large % decrease with the minimal amount of work.
You are suggesting a waterfall-style approach. Toil for years because it’s harder?
Gas generators OTOH have a 50 year lifespan. They'll have to be ripped out prematurely.
So they dont need ripped out, just better fuels.
But yes, there are lots of good hydrogen valves out there. Old natgas valves aren't good hydrogen valves.
Heat pumps are incredibly efficient. So much so that burning natural gas to generate electricity to power a heat pump is more efficient than burning the gas directly to create heat.
So even if we were to discount renewables entirely and change all natural gas furnaces to heat pumped powered by natural gas on the grid, we'd still come out ahead.
At a time when we _badly_ need to build more housing that people can actually afford, artificially raising the cost of building new homes also seems problematic. The rhetoric used by the republican lawmakers opposed to it does sound like the usual anti-regulation talking points, but I have to agree with them in this case. This would make life a lot harder and more expensive for a lot of people and I don't think "a few environmental groups" is enough consensus for the entire country.
Besides, if you're concerned about affordable housing, wouldn't (in the US at least) the first priority be to kill single-family zoning?
Assuming a heat pump lasts about 10 years, Has there been any analysis of the supply chain dependencies or repairability of heat pumps? I've asked this elsewhere and have had trouble figuring this out.
Saying this as someone currently fixing an old house, made haphazard 'kotatsu' heating setups, seen plenty of videos and articles evangelizing heat pumps, yet feel like there's little asked about the long term resilience or repairability of a given tech despite the greater efficiency.
Residential heat pumps are estimated to last 20-25 years; with typical services being capacitor changes, electromechanical contactors, and coil cleaning.
Digital thermostats from 15 years ago prevent the most common compressor issues. Smart thermostats can now detect symptoms proactively.
In the last 15 years, we've seen technological advances in compressor, gas, and electronics (as well as air to ground and air to water). And better calculations for sizing and air quality.
Also doesn't account for costs related to panel upgrades that often needs to happen in older homes to handle all these new electric appliances.
Similar with hot water heater, brand new, so I don't feel like it's reasonable to go buy a new hybrid.
"Make" everyone live in an apartment, because they shouldn't have the choice. "Make" everyone give up their personal transportation (mobility). "Make" everyone switch to solar or geothermal.
Substitute "make" with "force" and you'll have the correct understanding of what kind of government mechanisms we'd be empowering to achieve these ends. Removing choice is the wrong instinct.
Working to price external costs in, so they get factored in to choices, can sway the choices, but you're not forcing people, or making a way for one group of people to force some other group of people to certain actions.
How about we move healthtech CTOs into dungeons deep underground, where no climate control is neccessary; and provide them a single terminal to continue working and a diet of 2000 kcal/day of the cheapest, most climate friendly vegan food? No spices -- too many food miles.
[The parent poster describes themselves as a "Healthtech CTO, entrepreneur, writing code since 1991, living in Berlin, Germany" (https://web.archive.org/web/20220906213159/https://news.ycom...)]
I figured I'd get a response like that.
> Why are you so triggered by that?
I'm not triggered. You were suggesting to coercively force major lifestyle choices (that just happen to be yours) onto other people (which "how about moving the the working/middle class..." clearly communicates). If you think that's fine, then you should give your empathy some exercise, and think about being treated similarly yourself.
You're shifting the goalposts: that's not what you said in your original comment. If that's what you meant, you communicated it very poorly.
> Yes, you cannot put a fancy big grill on a balcony to keep up with Joneses, sorry.
What's that even supposed to mean? I kind of get the feeling you're reacting to caricatures without understanding that they're distorted.
There's such a thing as "quality of life", and no one put you in charge of making those decisions for other people.
Not everyone enjoys living in a human zoo, dude. Really.
There are people who actually enjoy (e.g.) having a yard for the kids to play in that's not full of dog (or human) feces and used hypodermic needles.
I hope we can make the transition as fair as possible but with the limited time we have left, we have to push on all fronts at the same time.
There is a limit (for better or worse) to the throughput of political actions (at least in a representative government). Care must be taken when deciding which priority to pursue.
Why not all flights? It shouldn't be so cheap to fly for pleasure OR business given the climate externalities caused by _every_ flight.
International regulation requires global coordination. And there's always going to be some country that uses non-compliance as a way to make money. This makes A and B very difficult and expensive to tackle.
And C will never happen because big-agra is incredibly powerful.
By contrast, the EPA is a single entity that's powerful enough to enact and enforce changes across the entire USA.
I feel like people don't realize just how effective EPA initiatives are in this space. Energy Star regulations have drastically increased the efficiency of appliances all across the world. And have done so in only 30 years.
It is pretty insane how debating a hot topic is now impossible. They are not even able to consider that an opposing political force might have different priorities or might simply be misguided. They just want to steal heating from americans because they are evil.
Honestly if I could go back 10 years when I replaced my oil furnace with gas, I'd definitely attempt to install a ground source heat pump instead. With the gas change it "paid for itself" in about 5 years, and I'd still be waiting for the ground source system, but I'd be frankly more future proof.
I can generate my own electricity with solar. I can't make my own natural gas.
Then there is the issue that anaerobic septics a illegal in most areas since they stink when vented to atmosphere.
With that said...
I went to the Pickathon music festival last month (near Portland). The festival requires that all food from vendors be served in a reusable wide/shallow plastic bowl. Put the dirty bowl in a bin, and get a token for the next food purchase. Same idea with a tin cup, but attendees hold onto the cup (it comes with a carabiner). No single-use plastic allowed. Friends and I found the system easy and pleasant. A festival founder said in an interview that he hasn't heard complaints. He said other festivals have tried making this an option, but it didn't get traction.
The point is... sometimes it's easier for people to adjust to a new hard requirement, vs. swimming up-stream in a society that's very slow to adapt (because we're overwhelmed and status quo is known and relatively safe).
I’m all in favor of what the festival did though. I hate how much trash large gatherings can produce.
That seems incredibly high. Canada is less than half of that. In a country with a far more spread out population and colder winters.
Canada has lots and lots of hydro (59.3% of Canada's electricity generation), and the low population density means it will cover much of your demand.
If your point is just "natural gas is currently used for electricity generation", then that's no argument against using heat pumps. I'll add that you get more heating from using NG combined cycle + a modern home heat pump than you'd get just burning the NG in a home furnace.
Gas-fired heat pumps might still be more efficient (or might not), as one is also effectively capturing and using the waste heat from the generation of work from the gas.
In fact it won't even operate below 0F, so it's just not going to work regardless of the COP above that. As nightly temps are below 0F all the time.
So i'll get good savings on my bill when it's daylight and freeze to death at night. Great.
Why are you talking about 0 F now instead of -30 F? Modern heat pumps can work just fine at 0 F. If you find one that doesn't, then don't buy it, get a better one.
Regardless. Night time temps fluctuate at the bottom of the COP range and then might even need resistive when the heating demand is the absolute greatest. Plus you would need to build an outdoor shelter for the outside unit to handle snow. Then you have to hope the power grid holds up to all these people on resistive power. You can't just look at the happy path of.. well on average it works out great. The system seems to get quite complicated in extreme environments.
These are environmental organizations, of course they sent a letter. That's what they do. They'll also probably get a letter from all the heat pump manufacturers saying they're cool with it, and other letters from people selling natural gas and gas furnaces. I'm sure they'd like you to stop cutting down trees and that ain't going to happen either.
Burning coal to run the electric cars.
Shutting down nuclear reactors, and increasing dependence on oil from oppressive countries.
Banning the sale of ICE vehicles, and forcing everyone to move onto electric vehicles when the existing grid can't even support air conditioning.
Punitively taxing the use of fertilizer during a time of food shortage.
I'm all out of charity guys. These people don't want to save the environment. They just want to create suffering.
Those days are long gone.
Some people do use wood for heating (in a wood-burning stove for example) but those are rare exceptions that either make sense contextually (a cabin far from infrastructure) or as a sort of aesthetic experience, like playing your favorite album on vinyl instead of Spotify.
But we all know why we should not heat, say, every house in Chicago primarily by cutting and burning trees.
I think folks in the future will feel the same way about pulling a bunch of gas out of the ground and individually burning that in our basements, closets, or kitchens. Furnaces are, let’s face it, very old school, dirty and poorly optimized technologies. I can literally see the blue flames through gaps in the metal when my furnace is on, and it’s a nice new high-efficiency model that is less than a decade old. I have carbon monoxide alarms in my bedrooms. Great.
Sure, this petition is a blunt instrument that would cause havoc if implemented as written. But the thing about transitions is that you have to start somewhere or it will never happen. Can we agree that phasing out gas makes sense? Even if this specific petition is flawed.
There are national emissions standards for residential wood burning appliances, and in some cases state as well. In addition many localities have restrictions on wood burning and can issue temporary blanket bans based on air quality measurements.
The development of this regulation went hand-in-hand with a broader cultural awareness of the importance of air quality (indoor and outdoor)—and a desire to not cut down all the nice forests around the country. So wood has suffered from a source restriction as well.
What a low effort comment. This thread is just riddled with them from people who seem too angry to form a rational thought.
- electricity sources for heating
- percentage of emissions coming from home heating via natural gas vs coal-originating electric heaters
- efficiency of progress over the years, expected trajectory
- predictions for how this will all actually play out, without hyperbole
Weird question. You're looking for "carbon intensity", the CO2 emitted per kWh: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1133295/electric-sector-...
> percentage of emissions coming from home heating via natural gas vs coal-originating electric heaters
Surely you mean relative emissions, not percent. Natural gas creates 53 kg of CO2 per mmBTU. A good heat pump (for instance: https://www.fujitsu-general.com/us/products/vrf/j4/aou60rlav...) has a COP of 3.6+, meaning 3.6 kWh of heat per kWh of electricity. Alternately, 81.4+ kWh per mmBTU.
Any state with a carbon intensity below 1,435 lbs CO2 per MWh will emit less CO2 using a heat pump rather than natural gas. Six states have higher carbon intensities: Utah, Indiana, Missouri, Wyoming, Kentucky and West Virginia.
In the state with the lowest carbon intensity, Washington, 1 mmBTU of natural gas will emit 7.21x as much CO2 as 1 mmBTU from a heat pump.
> efficiency of progress over the years, expected trajectory
Heat pumps are already half the price of gas heating, per BTU. The carbon intensity in those 6 states will rapidly decrease as natural gas outcompetes coal. In 5 years it's likely every state will have <1435 carbon intensity.
On the merits, requiring replacement with a different type of unit is foolish policy and not the right starting point. As it stands now, new houses are still being built with natural gas. Eliminating that would be a bigger win, and twenty years from now you can work on phasing out what already exists.
So, you should have said the EPA "could not do this, but now they can."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/climate/epa-supreme-court...
As an aside, that is going to have some weird unforeseen effects at low levels because it means that almost every car and every dwelling or heated structure emits "pollutants" and there's god knows how many other laws that they therefore become subject to.
If you are objecting to food produced directly from fossil fuels, or methane emissions in agriculture, then yes those are valid targets to be addressed.
"The resilience of Earth’s atmosphere has been proven throughout our planet’s climate history" https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-...
But it is.
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