[HN Gopher] New York City bans natural gas in new buildings
___________________________________________________________________
New York City bans natural gas in new buildings
Author : mortonstreet
Score : 45 points
Date : 2021-12-25 20:57 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Didn't NY just shut down a few of their remaining nuclear plants
| that need to be made up for with coal and natural gas plants?
| imgabe wrote:
| Instead of burning natural gas at the building, burn 5x as much
| at a power plant hundreds of miles away to generate electricity,
| then convert it back into heat at the building. Smart.
| nine_k wrote:
| According to my power bill, 50% of electricity in my Brooklyn
| apartment comes from nuclear generation, about 25% from hydro
| and solar, and the remaining 25% from fossil fuels, mostly
| natural gas.
| exegete wrote:
| A lot easier to switch to renewals with electricity. I don't
| know of a way to do that with natural gas.
| glogla wrote:
| There's [1] but I'm not impressed by the efficiency numbers.
|
| Also, no need to go through electricity. Significant part of
| my city is heated by waste heat of power plant that would
| otherwise go out the cooling tower.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Couldn't they just cut off the gas and switch to electric
| once the power plants are clean(-enough)?
| dml2135 wrote:
| No, you need to transition over time.
|
| Your idea is to just cut off the gas one day, and expect
| everyone to go out and buy new appliances at the same time?
| I don't think I need to explain why phasing in such a
| change is preferable.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I don't expect to just cut it off all of a sudden. They
| could announce the cut some years in advance.
|
| Of course, if right now they already expect to cut off
| the gas a few years from now, they may as well not build
| new pipes.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| NYC already has relatively low-CO2 electricity and is
| signing an agreement with hydro Quebec to keep things that
| way.
| ikr678 wrote:
| A lot of gas distribution networks are experimenting with
| hydrogen blending (adding a % of sustainably generated
| hydrogen to the methane blend), much the same as adding
| ethanol to petrol.
|
| However, beyond the engineering issues (existing pipes not
| always suitable for hydrogen blended gas) it just kicks the
| can down the road and delays the structural changes needed to
| get households away from using natural gas.
|
| Only a few are doing full % hydrogen conversions, City of
| Leeds being the biggest project under way.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Power plants are way more efficient, transfer loses are way
| exaggerated, and most of the energy will be soon provided by
| only renewable sources.
|
| EDIT: and according to this [0], most of New York's electricity
| is already carbon free.
|
| [0] https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=NY#tabs-4
| beervirus wrote:
| Power plants are more efficient at generating electricity,
| mechanical work, etc. than small generators. They are
| certainly not more efficient at generating heat than just
| burning the gas is.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Why not? When you use a stove, look how much of the flame
| is open, and take note of how much heat is being thrown off
| and not going into your food. When gas is burned in a
| plant, much more of that heat is captured.
|
| But it's really a moot point, because the goal is to change
| the power plants to clean energy sources anyway.
| imgabe wrote:
| Quantify "way more efficient". How many cubic meters of
| natural gas do I need to burn to produce a given number of
| joules of heat at point of use vs. at a power plant?
|
| It's not just transfer losses. The power plant has to heat
| water to steam, use the steam to turn a turbine. There's
| losses all along that process vs. directly using the heat
| where you want to heat something.
| moooo99 wrote:
| A huge power plant that burns 5 times the amount of gas also
| generates more than 5 times the energy compared to you burning
| it at home at your stove. Especially for cooking it really
| surprised me that cooking with gas is still so common in the
| US. Here, basically every new house has uses induction which
| has become really accessible.
|
| When it comes to gas for heating I'm somewhat indifferent. Even
| if the electricity is primarily from fossil source (which I
| don't know, but it is likely) I'd imagine it is a whole lot
| easier to continue improving the energy production to reach
| net-zero than it would be to wait and replace the gas heating
| in thousands of buildings.
| imgabe wrote:
| The power plant burns the gas to heat water, which creates
| steam, which turns a turbine, which generates electricity
| which then gets turned back into heat at my stove.
|
| The gas burned at my stove doesn't _need_ 5 times as much
| because the heat from burning it goes directly into whatever
| I 'm cooking on my stove.
| kaibee wrote:
| Have you ever tried to hold your hand next to the edge of
| the pot..? A lot of the heat is not going into the pan.
| imgabe wrote:
| Yeah, the same thing is happening at the power plant.
| macintux wrote:
| I can't speak to the relative efficiency, but central power
| generation is much easier to upgrade (both in terms of
| scrubbing the emissions and switching to renewables).
| gisely wrote:
| It's deeply depressing that none of the comments here so far are
| positive toward this move. The earth will be utterly transformed
| by climate change in next century to detriment of nearly every
| living thing on it. We have only one reliable mechanism to
| mitigate to harm we are causing: ending fossil fuel use. To do
| that everything that currently uses fossil energy needs to be
| electrified. Every year we waste letting new buildings get built
| with gas furnaces makes it that much harder to limit the damage
| we've caused.
|
| Stop using the fact much electrical generation still uses fossil
| fuels to argue against electrification. Petition to bring new
| renewable generation online and close coal and gas powered plants
| instead. Stop romanticizing a gas stove that pollutes the air in
| your home as you cook at it. Get an induction stove heats just as
| fast instead.
|
| Stop pretending we have time to "wait and assess" and starting
| fighting for a livable future on only home we have.
| pikma wrote:
| Thank you for your comment. I myself have cooked on gas my
| whole life, have learnt over years how each of my different
| pans heats over gas (it sounds stupid but there are a lot of
| subtleties when it comes to cast iron, carbon steel and
| stainless steel, how they hear up at different rates and
| develop hot spots, how the sides and the center hear
| differently, and how that can result in burnt oil). I am
| anxious to have to learn all of this again on induction, and
| maybe even having to let go of my beloved carbon steel pan
| (it's unclear to me how well it will work on induction and
| whether it will warp or spin on the flat surface).
|
| But overall the reasoning of this change makes sense to me -
| we'll all have to adapt and it'll be annoying but we can't
| wait. The right time to start was 30 years ago - the second
| best time is now.
| whalesalad wrote:
| You can pry my gas stove from my cold dead hands.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Same here. I have had the displeasure of experiencing multiple
| multi day electricity outages in the Northeast, and having a
| natural gas connection to the house was an immense lifesaver.
|
| Heat (from gas fireplace), hot water, and home cooked meals
| were no problem.
| galago wrote:
| gas/electric/induction all co-exist for various reasons. i
| liked gas until i realized that for heating a pot of water,
| even standard electric is faster in the stretch because the
| element is in contact with the pot. also electric/induction are
| just a straight surface which is easier to clean. i currently
| have gas in a rental, but i wish i had one of the other
| options. if we have gas we can roast marshmallows, which fun...
| but maybe it just seems fun due to the higher carbon dioxide
| levels.
| codedokode wrote:
| I see comments saying that heating with electricity is more
| efficient than with gas. So, will it cost less?
| dxhdr wrote:
| "There are exceptions for new buildings used for certain
| activities, including manufacturing, hospitals, commercial
| kitchens and laundromats."
|
| Want to take bets on who consumes the most natural gas,
| households or the exceptions?
| beervirus wrote:
| Shhhhhh. Something must be done, and this is something.
| Therefore it must be done.
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| In NYC, it's almost certainly households.
| SECProto wrote:
| On a per-unit basis, obviously the commercial users. But on a
| per-building and city-wide basis, almost definitely residential
| - huge amount of natural gas is used for residential space
| heating.
| lbrito wrote:
| "New buildings in the biggest U.S. city with 8.8 million
| residents will have to use electricity for heat and cooking"
|
| Hmm, I wonder where the electricity comes from. If it comes from
| natural gas as well, then they're just adding another step of
| energy transformation, which is aka more inefficiency, right? Or
| worse, maybe some of the electricity comes from dirtier sources
| than natural gas.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| They're being smarter than that. The city also signed an
| electricity supply agreement with Hydro Quebec, which is
| supposed to be operational before the ban on natural gas in new
| buildings comes into effect. [Minor correction: some smaller
| new buildings may have the ban in effect for 2 years before the
| new electricity becomes operational.]
|
| Hydro Quebec is, as the name suggests, hydroelectricity and
| therefore cleaner and more sustainable/renewable than natural
| gas.
| dml2135 wrote:
| No, even if power plants are still run by fossil fuels, the
| electrification of the home leads to greater efficiency due to
| the economies of scale that centralizing the power production
| provides.
|
| Also, once everything is electrified, it's easy to switch out
| the source of that electricity to something cleaner, at any
| time. Whereas people purchasing new gas appliances now will
| keep them in service for the next 10-20 years.
| usrusr wrote:
| My immediate reaction was the exact opposite, because
| replacing natural gas with manufactured gas would be
| comparatively easy. You can even push plain H2 into the mix
| as long as the fraction is within a certain range. A gas
| network can serve as a considerable sink for non-dispatchable
| renewables to not go to waste. But it's the same (or better!)
| for centralized natgas plants, so that's clearly better, at
| least as long as there are no cheap compromises taken to go
| electric (like installing cheap resistive heating, which is
| actually a thing here in Germany, where an entire industry
| pretends that we'd be fine in cold air as long as there's
| some IR emitter pointed at our body)
| prepend wrote:
| Wow, this is oddly stupid. I thought just weirdos wanted this
| kind of change and this is the first I've heard of a
| municipality.
|
| Gas is so efficient for heating (and great for cooking), it seems
| bad for climate change to not allow it.
|
| Theater seems to be catching on and I hope we don't see more
| climate change theater regulations.
| stefan_ wrote:
| How is it "so efficient for heating"? It's much more efficient
| to burn the gas for electricity then use the electricity to run
| a heat pump.
| usrusr wrote:
| And it only gets better when you use the waste heat from the
| powerplant for even more heating.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| No you lose energy in the transfer.
|
| While burning nat. gas is efficient, you do lose energy in
| the process.
|
| A coal plant is 50% efficient, and CHP plant is 80-90%
| efficient.
|
| A nat. gas heat pump is 80%-93% efficient depending on the
| money you want to spend.
|
| A standard efficiency nat. gas furnace is at least 80%
| efficient, they top out at 98% efficiency.
|
| Pretty obvious that converting from heat to electricity to
| heat is going to be less efficient than just converting to
| heat.
|
| Not to mention the furnace is more efficient than the gas
| plant (max of 98% compared to a max of 90%).
|
| Also the transmission and storage of nat. gas vs electricity
| is more efficient.
| [deleted]
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| You're comparing Carnot efficiencies for heat pumps with
| nominal efficiencies for natural gas heaters. Heat pumps
| have nominal efficiencies well over 100%. They can move
| more joules of heat from outside than the number of joules
| of energy they consume.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| The efficiency depends on the temp. outside.
|
| That's why nat. gas is used for heating more in the north
| and less so in the south.
|
| At a certain point it's more efficient to burn the gas
| directly.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| Unless you're heating your house in the arctic, a modern
| heat pump is still going to have a nominal efficiency
| well over 100%. So if you're claiming your heat pump
| numbers above are nominal efficiencies, I'm really
| curious as to where you're getting them.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| It's a simple formula, the CoP, I linked it in my above
| post.
|
| The below PDF has a chart of temps to efficiencies. 37F
| will have around an 80% efficiency.
|
| https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/04/f34/2_322
| 19_...
|
| That's a potential 40% energy loss. 20% at the plant, 20%
| at the house.
|
| It all depends on the region's temperature. Electric
| heating is more efficient in some places, less efficient
| in some, and equal in some.
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| > Gas is so efficient for heating
|
| Heat pumps are multiple times more efficient than gas for
| heating.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Heat pumps and induction ranges have changed the game. Dirty
| gas does not have the same advantages over electric that it
| used to.
| tyronehed wrote:
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Per reporting from the beginning of 2020, fossil gas is far
| worse than was previously suspected.
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/super-pot...
| brtkdotse wrote:
| > Gas is so efficient for heating
|
| Nope. Put one kWh of gas in, get _maybe_ 0.9kWh of heat out.
|
| Put one kWh of electricity into a heat pump and get at the very
| least 3 kWh of heat out.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Put one kWh of electricity into a heat pump and get at the
| very least 3 kWh of heat out.
|
| Even when it is below freezing outside?
| tzs wrote:
| Heat pumps such as Mitsubishi's "Hyper-Heat" models should
| be above 3 to 1 down to a little below freezing, and better
| than 2 to 1 down to around 0 (-18). They are down to about
| 1 to 1 at -15 (-26).
| brtkdotse wrote:
| It's -10C here right now and my heat pump is pulling less
| than 3kW to heat the whole house.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| It's a matter of the refrigerant you use. Don't worry about
| the freezing point of water.
| dpark wrote:
| Heat pump efficiency drops as the difference between the
| indoor and outdoor temperature grows. No one specifically
| cares about the freezing point of water for this, but
| it's a good proxy for "big temperature difference".
| insaneirish wrote:
| > Even when it is below freezing outside?
|
| Yes. For instance, one of the heat pumps in my house has a
| coefficient of performance of 3.2 at 17F/-8C.
|
| Reference: https://ashp.neep.org/#!/product/51106
| hashimotonomora wrote:
| Electricity is of (much) higher exergy than natural gas so
| it's not a directly comparable measure.
| SECProto wrote:
| Even burning natural gas in a peaker plant to generate
| electricity (nTh [?] 0.6), and account for transmission
| losses(~0.9), and then using that electricity to run a heat
| pump (~2.5) - is still more efficient than natgas space
| heating
| nine_k wrote:
| Burning gas for heating is less efficient than burning gas to
| produce electricity and use it to run a heat pump.
|
| Burning gas for cooking is more efficient than burning it to
| generate electricity and turn it back to heat in an induction
| stove.
|
| I can imagine banning natural gas from apartments to avoid
| catastrophic explosions, but it's not about daily efficiency.
| dpark wrote:
| > _Burning gas for cooking is more efficient than burning
| it to generate electricity and turn it back to heat in an
| induction stove._
|
| Is it? Induction cooktop heating is quite efficient. Gas is
| extremely inefficient. Huge amounts of heat roll up the
| side of the pot/pan and into the air, to be blown outside
| by the hood vent.
|
| There's quite a bit of loss in generating and transmitting
| electricity but I am not sure it's worse than gas cooktop
| efficiency.
| mangoman wrote:
| Gas is actually less efficient for cooking than induction
| https://www.treehugger.com/which-more-energy-efficient-cooki...
|
| however, for heating, it does seem like gas can be more
| efficient depending on where it is installed. I don't think
| it's quite right to call it stupid though. Gas is, on net,
| worse for the environment.
| RhysU wrote:
| Cooking efficiency is an odd metric. Probably boiling (via
| induction-heated water) or microwaving heats things best but
| blech for taste.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| tyronehed wrote:
| cascom wrote:
| What's so stupid is this isn't the problem - the amount of fuel
| oil heated buildings in Manhattan is astonishing
| nine_k wrote:
| Oil heating _and_ poor thermal insulation. Burn more oil in
| winter, and more electricity in summer!
|
| I think adding good insulation would make the largest
| improvement both for energy efficiency and quality of life in
| such buildings.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Heating oil is one part of the problem. Natural gas is another.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Redundancy is a great thing. If the power lines ice over, or
| there's a grid failure for another reason, heat goes, water pipes
| freeze over, and people will literally freeze to death in winter.
| There was power failure in the entire province in Quebec in 1989
| due to a solor storm. This is not hypothetical happening, but
| something to be expected. Considering the age and general decline
| of infrastructure in large US cities.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Agree with this, but the green solution for this is home
| batteries, not fossil fuels.
|
| We do need to harden and invest in the electric grid though,
| and I worry that climate activists may not be making it a high
| enough priority. You'll lose support for electrification real
| fast if people lose their heat in the depths of winter.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I've experienced power going out for a week. I don't know if
| we have battery technology to heat a house for a week. The
| tesla battery is 13.5 kWh and costs more than $10k. Just
| rough calculation, a typical baseboard heater is 1k so thats
| just enough capacity to run one heater for 13 hours.
|
| The space requirements and enough battery capacity for an
| entire 50 story apartment building that would last a week,
| would probably be prohibitively expensive. The alternative of
| having to fix frozen pipes in a large apartment building,
| even if nothing is flooded is probably months of plumbing
| work. If you could even find the plumbers to do the work if
| theres a large scale power outage in a city.
|
| My uncle is a plumber, plumbing a new condo building takes
| months and even years. And thats without complications of
| having to tear out walls to find where the pipes burst. I had
| frozen pipes in a house and it was a nightmare to deal with.
| They burst in multiple places and flood when temperature
| heats up.
|
| I'm for green technology, but not when it will kill people.
| Its important to make sound decisions, not based on ideology.
| Especially if you want to achieve your goals. You don't want
| the public to quickly turn against you.
| yuppie_scum wrote:
| Induction cooking is by all accounts awesome if you have the
| right cookware.
|
| I think we will see some nice high end electric heating fixtures
| as well. Plus more radiant floor heat.
| dpark wrote:
| I kind of hope not. Electric heat is far less efficient than
| heat pumps.
| runarberg wrote:
| My mom got an induction stove not long ago and I tried it in my
| last visit, and I was thoroughly impressed. You have really
| nice control over the heat (even better then on gas stoves) and
| it heats up really fast.
|
| The only problem is that if you have gathered an impressive set
| of pots and pans you have to start from scratch. However that
| can be remedied with an adapter. I've heard people complain
| about the adapter, however I was able to cook icelandic
| pancakes just as easily on an induction stove with an adapter
| as I would on a standard electric stove.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| My landlord replaced my gas stove with an induction stove (with
| convection oven), and it is without question the nicest oven
| I've ever used. Even the broiler is somehow terrific.
|
| Most of my neighbors are clinging to their old gas ovens out of
| nostalgic attitudes or skepticism. I've tried to convince them
| that they're missing out.
| dml2135 wrote:
| wow your landlord sounds awesome, do you live in nyc? I think
| I'm resigned to using gas until I buy a home (if that day
| ever comes).
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| I do live in NYC. "Awesome" isn't quite the term I'd use...
| he's highly motivated to get gas out of this building (one
| highly illegal piece of plastic ductwork from
| Czechoslovakia was found in our system -- had there been a
| fire and this piece melted, BLAMMO).
|
| Personally, I am convinced by recent studies that indoor
| gas is just blanket bad for health, so I was quite happy to
| cooperate.
|
| https://www.vox.com/energy-and-
| environment/2020/5/7/21247602...
| romwell wrote:
| IMO a blanket ban like that is stupid.
|
| The amount of gas used for cooking is miniscule, accounting for
| under 3% of consumption[1].
|
| Cooking with fire is different than cooking on an electric or
| induction stovetop. Banning the use of gas for heating would have
| been more than enough.
|
| That's before we even get to the amazing fact that 40% of our
| electricity comes from _burning natural gas_ [2], and that that
| natural gas powerplant efficiency is about 40%[3].
|
| Which means that with the existing electricity infrastructure,
| switching from gas to electricity for heating results in _more_
| gas being burned.
|
| Talk about putting the cart before the horse.
|
| [1] https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/is-your-
| cookin...
|
| [2]
| https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
|
| [3] http://needtoknow.nas.edu/energy/energy-sources/fossil-
| fuels...
| noahtallen wrote:
| > That's before we even get to the amazing fact that 40% of our
| electricity comes from burning natural gas [2], and that that
| natural gas powerplant efficiency is about 40%
|
| Like electric cars, a benefit would be that the energy source
| is generalized. I like thinking of it as a good separation of
| concerns. If nearly everything is electrified, then everyone
| benefits as better and more efficient energy sources become
| available over time.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| It would also be easier to employ hypothetical future carbon
| capture systems at a small number of power plants compared to
| a large number of homes.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Efficiency of cooking with gas is less than 30% so I'm not sure
| your point about relative efficiencies is correct. But I agree
| with the overall point.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| I guess part of the reason is that, in the long run, you don't
| want to maintain the gas infrastructure for a whole city just
| to let people cook with gas.
| parkingrift wrote:
| All existing residential is excluded. Any new residential is
| mostly excluded for the next 6 years. Commercial,
| manufacturing, and laundromats are excluded.
|
| The city will be maintaining the gas infrastructure for
| eternity. There will just be a subset of unfortunate
| residents that have to cook with electric while 99% of their
| neighbors continue with gas.
| Grakel wrote:
| Yep. Practically everyone in New York has gas, and it is so
| wonderful. When I left I had to get used to electric again,
| it's like an easy bake oven.
| dymk wrote:
| An electric stovetop boils water faster than a gas
| stovetop
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I assume the goal here is to eliminate the expensive and leaky
| natural gas delivery network entirely: nobody is going to build
| something that complicated just so a few foodies can make stir
| fry (and people who really care can purchase it in bottled
| form.) So any world where the LNG delivery network exists is
| going to be one where it's used for heating. Getting to CO2 net
| zero involves moving those applications entirely to non-fossil
| electricity.
| MrFoof wrote:
| > _I assume the goal here is to eliminate the expensive and
| leaky natural gas delivery network entirely: nobody is going
| to build something that complicated just so a few foodies can
| make stir fry (and people who really care can purchase it in
| bottled form.)_
|
| There are inductive surfaces explicitly designed for woks,
| with a very deep, concave "bowl" to accommodate the wok.
|
| I know two families (both Thai) that have bought them with
| zero regret and no complaints. Not cheap and certainly niche,
| but they do work as expected.
|
| UPDATE: There are also adapter rings designed to work with
| woks. These aren't "half-assed, _maybe they work_ " items.
| They are made for commercial kitchens, as in _actual_
| restaurants. Restaurants don 't pay Gaggenau for _hoping_
| something works and doesn 't disappoint customers -- they pay
| them because it does.
| romwell wrote:
| >Getting to CO2 net zero involves moving those applications
| entirely to non-fossil electricity.
|
| The necessary and sufficient condition for that is the cost
| of electric heating to consumer being lower than the cost of
| gas heating in both short and long term (i.e., a 5-year
| subsidy isn't it).
|
| This requires a significant reshaping of our electricity
| generation. Everything else is a band-aid on an axe wound.
|
| A federal tax on burning natural gas can make that shift
| happen, but will hit the poor people.
|
| Finally, again, you can't shift to non-fossil electricity
| because you don't get to choose which electricity you shift
| to. As is, you're just going to burn more gas in a different
| place. The benefits of this rearrangement aren't obvious to
| me.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It's more efficient to burn gas to make electricity (45%
| efficient), transport it over the grid (95%), and then run
| a heat pump (250 - 600% efficient) than it is to burn the
| gas for heat (80 - 95% efficient).
|
| And renewable electricity is cheaper than gas electricity,
| if it is available.
| adeelk93 wrote:
| You have to factor in the energy efficiency of heat pumps, and
| if you do, burning gas to produce electricity to run a heat
| pump can be comparable in efficiency to burning gas directly.
| gisely wrote:
| This is about heating more than cooking as heating is a way
| bigger energy use for most households, but you are seriously
| proposing it would a smart move to build out gas delivery
| infrastructure just so people can keep cooking with gas?
|
| More importantly, please stop using the tired old excuse that
| we should wait to electrify until all electric generation is
| renewable. Converting domestic heating infrastructure to
| electric is a massive project that will probably take decades
| and represents billions of tons of CO2 emissions already baked
| in. We need to start now. Deciding to build new gas
| infrastructure today is committing to burn more gas for
| decades.
| parkingrift wrote:
| These restrictions are arbitrary and nonsensical. No new gas in
| buildings under 7 floors after 2023. No new gas in buildings over
| 7 floors after 2027. ...unless it's a kitchen, laundromat, or
| manufacturing.
|
| So... we're going to have 99% of buildings wired for gas for many
| decades to come. We will continue maintaining the infrastructure
| with no end in sight.
|
| Is this the biggest display of virtue signaling in US history?
| How will this accomplish anything at all?
|
| As a NYC resident I want to be annoyed by this, because I prefer
| cooking on gas, but if I die of old age in NYC I won't ever be
| impacted by this.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Would you be happier if they banned all gas outright? This is
| how you make change, in small steps.
| parkingrift wrote:
| If they actually banned gas I would just leave.
|
| Fortunately, they can't do that. Instead, they focus on
| writing rules that will have zero impact.
| decremental wrote:
| We should keep electing these forward thinking pioneers. It keeps
| working out so great in all the places they're in charge of. You
| will keep electing them who am I kidding. They said anyone who
| doesn't agree with them is an anti-vax climate denying racist.
| Can't have those mean names on our record.
| sbuccini wrote:
| It seems like a lot of folks think of this ban as a way to tackle
| climate change when I always thought it was primarily a public
| health issue[0], with a second-order goal of eventually
| preventing natural gas explosions[1].
|
| [0] https://www.vox.com/energy-and-
| environment/2020/5/7/21247602...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| At first I didn't really understand but then I realized this is
| America. Funding and maintaining infrastructure is not exactly
| a priority...
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