As the United States has begun transitioning away from the use of coal and petroleum as a source of electricity and fuel, natural gas has been viewed as a relatively benign fossil fuel. After all, natural gas produces less carbon dioxide when burned than those other fossil fuels. It remains the energy source in about half of California’s buildings.
But scientists have increasingly warned that methane, the main component of natural gas, is itself a key heat-trapping gas — 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first twenty years after release, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. In addition to the carbon dioxide created by its burning, the inevitable leaks as natural gas is extracted and shipped, make gas a serious climate threat in its own right.
State policy calls for the electrification of buildings — the source of about 10 percent of California’s greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from natural gas. Several state agencies and many cities and counties are working on a variety of programs to promote electrification. But none have gone as far as the ordinance scheduled to come before the Berkeley City Council on July 9.
Once again, the City of Berkeley is considering a groundbreaking environmental policy: This time it’s a ban on natural gas hookups in all new buildings, starting January 1, 2020.
Berkeley is about to see a “wave of new multistory construction,” with at least 3,100 residential units currently planned, said Councilmember Kate Harrison, who introduced the measure. “These buildings will be in place for 100 years,” she said. “Emergency action is needed to prevent locking in the greenhouse gas and safety impacts” of natural gas.
In addition to the fuel’s impact on climate change, Harrison also noted that using natural gas means “pumping a toxic, flammable liquid over fault lines into our homes.” Cooking with gas is linked to asthma attacks and hospitalizations, hitting hardest in children and communities of color. A 2013 Lawrence Berkeley Lab study found that in 60 percent of the homes with gas stoves, the air pollution level violates federal standards for outdoor air. “Your Gas Stove is Bad for You and the Planet,” a recent guest editorial in The New York Times, reported that “a growing body of scientific evidence has shown that gas stoves throw off pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide.” Natural gas also is a fire hazard. A 2017 study by the US Geological Services identified broken gas lines as a key risk factor during an earthquake. Much of the damage and loss of life after an earthquake is caused by fires from broken gas lines.
So far, no opposition to the proposed gas ban has emerged. But pushback is expected, since many builders and residents are unfamiliar with the relatively new technologies for electric heating, cooling, and cooking. The city council committee working on the bill held two hearings for developers, but none showed up. “The next step is outreach to builders and the business community,” Harrison said.
HT/Willie Soon
“Berkeley is about to see a “wave of new multistory construction,” with at least 3,100 residential units currently planned, said Councilmember Kate Harrison, who introduced the measure.”
I thought Berkeley was full. Where are these going to go? Presumably they replace blocks of old single family houses in the lower, poorer part of town. Does multistory mean walk-ups or high-rises? Or with that many units, is it “projects” style? I think this matters more than what they heat it with. In any case, I’m glad that they are volunteering to be the guinea pig. Go for it. They can beg for nuclear power later.
The Cult of Carbon Climageddon are using the same tried-and-true tactics on NG as they did on coal, of spreading lies about it. They have already decided that it’s “bad”, so all they have to do is cobble together a bunch of lies or things that have been known about for ages, but now, suddenly, that makes NG the villain. Classic.
NG has been villainized by the same faction that did so to CO2,
That should explain it.
I live in the vicinity of the Great Lakes. My furnace died and I had to heat with electricity for a while. The bills were eye watering. The thing is that my house is far better insulated than most of the others in the area. My neighbors, flat out, would not be able to afford to heat electrically.
Hmmm. What is more efficient, burn gas and use the heat on site, or burn gas to make electricity, run the electricity through a bunch of wires, then run the electricity through some appliance to turn the energy back into heat. I suppose if you have an ultra efficient power plant and appliances, you might compete with ancient gas appliances, but the odds are they are promoting waste.
Even better is micro chp – burn natural gas in a small generator, use all the electricity and all the heat.
Hard to get them here in North America becauae they’re over $10,000. Popular in Japan where almost all peteoleum is imported, natural gas is expensive, and nuclear power is unpopular.
Progressive politicians will continue pushing their ideology until the Yellow Vests come out.
“But scientists have increasingly warned that methane, the main component of natural gas, is itself a key heat-trapping gas — 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first twenty years after release, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.”
CH4 doesn’t trap heat, negligible impact on the heat budget.
No evidence that it is 84 more potent than CO2 and doesn’t last 20 years in the atmosphere.
I can’t get excited when they promote easy to spot baloney.
But the proles have been conditioned to believe the baloney.
Dennis
No joy for Ivanpah sans overnight natgas burning.
It is needed to keep the fuel “cooking” until sunrise when the bird fryers kick in and do their thing.
Last time I checked, the goal was to burn the gas, so whatever the “heat trapping” abilities of CH4 may be, it isn’t relevant.
We went through a time in the Midwest US when new natural gas hookups were prohibited because of a shortage. New homes were “all electric.” After several years the “shortage” ended and new hookups were permitted.
Every house but one in my neighborhood converted to gas.
Resistance heat was expensive. Heat pumps cost less to operate (than resistance furnaces) but had a short operating life. Heat pumps also delivered warm air in high volumes so houses (subjectively) never felt warm. Heat pumps were noisy because of the high volume of air circulated.
Cooking on an electric stove is at best annoying. Maybe induction stoves have solved that. We’ll see.
The bottom line is that people forced to heat and cook with electricity will be mad at the politicians that voted to outlaw natural gas. And they’ll be reminded of how mad they are every time the heat pump comes on or they have to boil an egg.
Bottom line number two … Will there be enough electrical power available to service all those houses and commercial buildings?
Enough electricity to meet the new load, rovingbroker? Don’t irritate your masters by asking questions when they are in the process of directing your life.
The following can be deduced from the MODTRAN Simulation.
The assertion that CH4 is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2 (numbers range all over, from about 15 to the 84x quoted here) depends on how the two gas concentrations are compared.
The amount of GH warming forced by a unit (per molecule, or ppm) increase in GH gas concentration (CH4 or CO2) when concentration is low (as with CH4 today) is much greater than the amount of GH warming forced by a unit increase in GH gas concentration when concentration is high (as with CO2 today). This is the so-called log-CO2 effect, where current partial saturation of IR absorption by CO2 decreases its effectiveness. Thus, at today’s atmospheric concentrations of CH4 and CO2, one unit (ppm) increase in CH4 produces about 23 times the warming as does a unit increase in CO2. IF CH4 and CO2 were in equal concentrations, CO2 would produce more warming on a unit increase basis than CH4. In per-molecule equal comparison, CO2 is a more effective greenhouse gas.
The 80× or 84× number has been around for at least 20 years. I suspect that they got it by using not molar concentration (which is normal for gases) but weight concentration. Methane has a molar weight of 16, compared with 44 for CO2, so by using ppmw instead of ppmv, 23× becomes 23 × (44 ÷ 16) = 63.25×. Not 80 or 84, but close enough for climate science. Big scary numbers!!
Or, they just made it up.
I’d go with they just made it up. That has worked for them so far over the past thirty years.
Have you noticed it is always the public sector employed “experts” that tell us what we must do?
We have no way of refusing, we can’t de-fund them, we can’t stop buying from them because they don’t produce anything. We can’t vote them out because they are not elected. They are public sector jobs for life tax payer funded shrills but not tax payer controlled.
The time for change is approaching. We can not survive with so many destructive agents operating against humanity and humanity’s basic needs.
Forget climate change and just consider the risk of earthquakes… Getting rid of gas lines kind of makes sense in an earthquake prone area. That, or retrofit existing lines with more automatic safety cutoff valves that shut down when they lose power or sense a big pressure drop – not just the main lines but all of them.
Solar rooftops make the same kind of sense in earthquake prone areas.
Not that I am advocating government interference, but if I were crazy enough to live near the San Andreas Fault, I certainly WOULD consider a solar roof and no gas lines whatsoever.
If California keeps it up, the cost of Grid supplied electricity will be so high that a solar rooftop will be the only way to get affordable power (yeah, at $0.50 a KwH, it will be cheaper then the Grid). In some cases the ONLY way to get power (due to the power self-imposed power outages for fire risk).
The smart person would simply move.
What happens in Berkeley (hopefully) stays in Berkeley. It’ll take a huge upgrade in electrical capacity to replace the joules produced by 90%+ NG furnaces, not to mention the extra load of everybody charging their electric cars. I know, heating is not an issue in Berkeley, but their circumstances differ greatly from most of the US.
Damn, I was 90% of the way into planning for my Berkeley joint Natatorium/Crematorium business venture; had the property picked out … had the logo & everything.
I suppose I’ll have to go elsewhere.
New York Governor Cuomo is way ahead of the self destruction curve:
https://naturalgasnow.org/dear-new-yorkers-complaining-about-no-gas-its-your-governor-stupid/
This has got to be an Onion article. No? Then heaven help us. Ignorance and idiocy seems to be rampant!
This anti natural gas stuff is being peddled in every City with left wing leadership.
I’m very curious about who (what group) is initially coordinating the contacts with the local wackos (in this case Kate Harrison).
Is this part of a search for a new climate bogey? There have been recent publications about the benefits of CO2 and some acceptance that the amount of vegetation on earth is increasing, possibly due to increased CO2 levels, so it is entirely possible that CO2 may be deregistered as a pollutant before too long.
Making methane the new villain, will allow pressure to be maintained on oil, gas and coal industries, as well as the beef industry,
Watch this space!
Berserkeley
The COGS demonisation of energy, no matter what form it takes continues.
The uptick in anti gas in all forms from the Green Socialists is directly related to the success of the USA fracking industry. The Greens are doing everything in their armoury to stop the UK fracking.
Sadly the UK establishment/institution is fast becoming as crazy as California. We have towns and cities trying to ban all forms of burning fuel for heat. The Log burners that are a feature of many city houses these days, mostly for appearance but occasionally lit for winter warmth/ambience are being targeted now. We have also been told there will be no gas connection to new properties from 2025 onward.
As you say in the USA go figure.
I live in the UK and have just received a quarterly summary of my domestic fuel usage. I only use gas and electricity in my house. The cost was about the same for each. For the same money I got about six times as much energy from the gas than from the electricity supplied to my house. If I was forced to go all electric the cost implication is horrific. Never mind about where would the extra electricity come from and is the distribution system capable of supplying the extra demand.
If they believe that NG is so dangerous then why do that allow it at all? Ban it! Make everyone convert. And think of all the new “Green Jobs” that will be created by doing so. The sooner Berzerkeley does it the better.
At least when we had “town gas” derived from coal (and containing carbon monoxide) people could stick their head in the oven as a relatively pleasant means of committing suicide when they could no longer bear the screeching preaching of crazed environmentalists.
Depopulation and Detroitification by any other means. If you make it impossible to live there no body will.
Maybe they have a plan after all…
?
Berkeley needs to add to their ordinance.
“All new construction must replace windows with solar panels and all bricks and concrete with batteries.”
Problem solved!
What are they going to do when the “Great Cooling” comes and they are going to need a lot more heat?
Is it just me, or does this article read like the warning label on DHMO ??
I wonder how long it will be before some California law maker proposes an entirely energy based economy where the Dollar is replaced by the Kwh and everyone is paid in energy credits that would be used to ‘purchase’ food, clothing, lodging…etc?
Of course, everyone would be ‘paid’ the same regardless of what they do to earn their energy credit unless their work was deemed of exceptional benefit to the state and would, therefore, warrant being paid more. On the other hand, one would be paid less if their work was not considered to be particularly valuable for some reason. Then there would be a ‘work review’ every few years to determine if an individual is worth more as a collection of body parts for harvest than if allowed to continue living. Unauthorized energy generation would be cause for arrest and summary execution. Every solar panel on every roof would belong to the state as would the power they generate. No one would have a personal vehicle any more and most forms of transportation, even bicycles, would be outlawed for personal use. Sure, I can see it now…California leading the way into a brave new world. /s
Max