By Steve Goreham
Originally published in Washington Examiner.
Earlier this month, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced that indoor gas stoves emitted harmful pollution. Several studies claim that the use of gas can cause respiratory illness. The CPSC is considering restrictions on gas stoves, including possible bans in new residential construction. But attacks on gas stoves are based on questionable science and are largely driven by concerns not related to health.
The CPSC has reportedly been considering actions on gas stoves since October. Richard Trumpka, Jr., a CPSC commissioner, stated “This is a hidden hazard. Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” Two recent studies figure prominently in agency concerns. The first, published in January last year by Eric Lebel and others, found that gas stoves and ovens emit hazardous levels of methane and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). The second, published in December last year by Talor Gruenwald and others, estimated that 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases in the US were due to gas stove use.
Nitrous oxide (NO) is produced at combustion temperatures above 1,600oC by breaking down nitrogen molecules in air. Modern stove burner flames reach temperatures above 1,600oC, producing NO. The nitrous oxide then combines with oxygen to form nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant. But the amount of NO2 generated by stoves is very small, only parts per billion (ppb) levels.
The Lebel study measured nitrogen dioxide levels of 100 ppb in kitchens, but this was after sealing the room in plastic—an unrealistic artificial condition. Other studies find NO2 levels to be as high as 34 ppb after several hours of stove and oven use. This level is below the 53 ppb limit of the National Ambient Air Quality Standard of the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA states that, for NO2 levels below 50 ppb, “No health impacts are expected for air quality in this range.” Most studies do not find hazardous levels of NO2 from stove use.
Nevertheless, the Gruenwald study claims that nitrogen dioxide from gas stoves is linked to asthma in children. It used statistical analysis to find an association between stoves and childhood asthma in the US. But the study itself states that it reviewed 27 other studies connected to gas stoves and none reported “associations between gas stove use and childhood asthma.” In addition, the Centers for Disease Control reports that asthma attacks and asthma hospitalizations for US children have been declining since 2001, while US natural gas consumption rose 38 percent over the same period.
Could it be that health concerns about gas stoves are a proxy for a larger issue? For more than a decade, environmentalists have promoted “electrification” of homes. Historically, the term “electrification” meant extending the electrical grid to rural areas and homes without electricity. But the renewable energy movement redefined electrification to mean electrify everything. As they see it, electrification of homes means replacement of gas stoves, furnaces, water heaters, and even propane grills with electric appliances. They say this is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and solve the problem of human-caused climate change.
Talor Gruenwald, the lead author of the study on childhood asthma in the US, is employed by the Rocky Mountain Institute, which also funded the study. For three decades, the institute has been working on programs to counter global warming. Eric Lebel is a researcher at Stanford University, with articles on methane emissions from oil and gas wells, gas water heaters, and gas stoves. His goal appears to be to counter global warming through electrification of homes by claiming harmful health effects from gas appliances.
Netherlands and the United Kingdom now urge their residents to replace gas appliances with electric appliances and heat pumps as part of programs to reach net-zero emissions. These policies were adopted even though 92 percent of homes in Netherlands use gas heat and 78 percent of homes in the UK use gas. The Netherlands aims to disconnect gas lines from eight million homes by 2050.
An electrification battle rages in the United States. Cities in seven states—California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington—have established bans on gas appliances in new construction. But in opposition, 19 other states recently enacted laws preventing local governments from banning natural gas and propane, or “impairing a consumer’s ability to choose a utility service.” Another four states have proposed legislation that would prohibit bans by local governments.
Residents pay significantly more in utility bills with electric appliances. For example, in 2020 the average price of residential natural gas in California was $14.14 per million British Thermal Units (Btu). For a new 95-percent-efficiency natural-gas furnace or water heater, this translates to a cost of just under $13 per million Btu. California’s 2020 residential electricity price was 20.51 cents per kWh, or a cost of $60.11 per million Btu. California residents can pay over four times as much to operate electric stoves, water heaters, or electric baseboard heat, compared to gas appliances.
Banning gas stoves will raise homeowner costs and reduce choices, without a tangible improvement in health.
Steve Goreham is a speaker on the environment, business, and public policy and author of the book Outside the Green Box: Rethinking Sustainable Development.
The whole thing is a lie, pure and simple.
Lies, damned lies and CliSciFi. Leftist goverments in action.
“Banning gas stoves will raise homeowner costs and reduce choices, without a tangible improvement in health.”
____________________________________________
Banning gas stoves will raise homeowner costs and reduce choices, without a tangible improvement in health or change to the climate.
And, the goal of cooling the climate, if somehow artificially achieved, will be detrimental to health.
The lack of CO2 will starve agriculture and the people plus make the world a barren wasteland!
Theoretically, reducing the infrastructure required to build a new community should be less costly if one of the services is eliminated. So many government admin types, even construction contractors, would be in favour of eliminating gas, and using the asthma/CO2 emissions thing as their talking point.
However we know that supplying heat to a community via electricity requires much more electrical infrastructure and generation. Add to this recharging for electric cars…Plus by eliminating competition, the cost of electricity will tend to go up simply due to feather-bedding…more admin fees for people who need more helpers to accomplish their supposedly difficult tasks of justifying ever higher bills.
It’s truly a case of sub-consciously self-serving wokeists suffering from Dunning-Kruger effect….
The Dunning-Kruger effected make perfect pawns (folks with BA degrees, tongue in cheek LOL). Especially, if it results in that wonderful self righteous glow that everyone else has it wrong. The perfect pawn is duped because they are puffed up and self righteous LOL Did Biden ever get a BS degree? LOL
The thing is, governments, at least in the US, are not responsible for utility infrastructure. Gas companies lay gas lines, and electric companies hang electric lines. If a gas company can’t see a profit running a line to some geographic location, that line doesn’t get run, unless there is something in the utility tariff requiring it.
I live on a hill with no civic NG distribution. I can get propane but CNG is cheaper. I can drive 8 miles a fill up my CNG tank to keep my gas stove going. It’s much better and cheaper than electric stoves. I lose power I still have a stove and oven and heat.
Biden’s plan to fix what isn’t broken is part of a bigger program of dissuading Americans about getting ideas about all that American NG. It’s ok for the utilities to burn it….. but don’t even think about burning it at home to produce electricity.
I know lots of people who would jump at a NG microturbine producing electricity while heating home and water heating if there was a good electrical storage system. Tesla panels are almost useless unless you love throwing money away…… but when something better comes along and Kattie bar the door.
This is the reason every state that has passed carbon tax … lobbied by Hydrocarbon Big Boys/Girls…has put riders in the carbon tax legislation to prevent off grid living. They see it coming…. because the big girls/boys see it coming. LOL
BTW…. folks with asthma/COPD/Interstitial lung disease can already avoid gas stoves and they do. .Electric stoves have been around forever.
Also, climate change phooey…. there is far more than climate change motivating this anti-NG crusade……. it just wouldn’t make sense otherwise. We still need to burn NG by utilities to run all those electric stoves. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is stupid and wrong but somebody smart is behind this seemingly nonsensical crusade against gas stoves and they have at least a BA degree LOL.
“…I know lots of people who would jump at a NG microturbine producing electricity while heating home and water heating…”
The microturbines I have seen are a little large for home use. IIRC bout the smallest is 50 kW which is more than double what a normal house would use at peak. In that size, there is limited turndown for generation and very low gas to electricity efficiency. Waste heat is many times what would be required for heating.
On the other hand, Generac and others make really nice full house reciprocating generators that run on gas. Again, not terribly efficient on the electric side, but if you have need for the heat to say heat a swimming pool or spa (there is a lot more heat available than typical hot water requirements) it could almost break even.
Figure in the capital cost and the ongoing maintenance costs and typically the grid still wins price-wise for baseline generation, but definitely nice to have a back-up if the grid is unreliable.
A whole house generator is typically $10k to $20k installed depending on size and options.
Yeah much better tech is needed for it to be viable for every home owner…. and it needs full commercialization on a mass level for the price to make sense. Bandwagons tend to push these things along. We are definitely not there yet. We need energy storage systems that can charge and distribute on demand, greater efficiency’s are created….only a SCMC can do that well and they are totally out of reach. But there is a stirring of interest. Home owners could for micro-coops but that is a far reach as well. There are some new turbines out there getting close for 45% efficacy.
Any way it’s the future that scares the hydrocarbon industry because of the immense supply of hydrocarbon fuel in the world. Anything to reduce consumption is scary. Personally, hydrocarbon fuel is the only way to go . I just want to be free of the grid.
I think part of this is the recognition that Fossil Fuel is becoming rapidly scarcer and less economic, and so forcing peole to use less is necessary, and partly because its great opportunty to make money selling new tech.
But mostly to disguise the tact that government is corrupt and incompetent and should have built out nuclear power years ago.
“is becoming rapidly scarcer and less economic”
By design. That’s obvious.
If something becomes scarcer it will naturally become more expensive and demand will fall, we don’t need governments to ban anything, that just distorts the market and presumably gives governments the false sense that they are the drivers of progress. As with gas central heating boilers and ICE cars, banning them suggests that the replacement will not find a natural market and has to be forced on an unwilling public. Horse carriages, propeller airliners, film cameras, cargo sailing ships, morse telegraph – all of these things are still technically available but are not widely used because something better replaced them.
Not true at all. There is plenty of fossil fuel available today and for the foreseeable future. For instance, in 2022 the US produced a record volume of oil and gas, and that was after nearly two years of depressed demand (due to the COVID recession) during which investments in new capacity plunged and then began a slow recovery trying to catch up with demand (which is why energy prices also plunged in early 2020, and then came back heavy in 2021-2022).
The world is awash in fossil fuel…. there is enough NG in the US to power the world for centuries. And there is plenty of NG in Brazil, Europe, central Asia. etc. This is the crux of the issue at hand. Who and how is the fossil fuel market going to be controlled and managed who is going to dominate the geographical markets and who is going to get rich and stay rich. The entire climate change movement is a cog in that wheel. Prices are propped up by political action which effect regulation on the supply side… it’s called supply side collusion.
For instance, I can fill my CNG tank at $2.45 per equivalent unit but I have to go get it. I can have heating oil delivered at $4.00 per equivalent unit and I can but gas in my car at 3.89. Why not CNG for house and car ….because it isn’t widely available and why not?
“The CPSC has reportedly been considering actions on gas stoves since October. Richard Trumpka, Jr., a CPSC commissioner, stated “This is a hidden hazard. Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”
There’s a lot of confusion on ‘home combustion’ with the alarmists. For example, the Guardian sees it not as a scientific issue, but as a part of a mythical ‘culture war’:
“Of all the political issues I assumed would come to the fore in 2023, gas stoves were not on my bingo card. And yet Americans’ right to cook on an open gas flame has turned into a red-hot culture war issue. “
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/18/how-did-gas-stoves-ignite-a-culture-war-in-the-us
“The latest hot potato? Gas stoves. Will the culture wars never end?
Republican politicians have waded into the argument over an imaginary plan to ban gas hobs”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/23/the-latest-hot-potato-gas-stoves-will-the-culture-wars-never-end
They quote the same latest study: “a recent one suggesting that gas stoves in US homes may be to blame for nearly 13% of childhood asthma cases. Gas stoves are bad for the environment, too, powered as they are by fossil fuels.”
This is, of course, utter nonsense. But in the UK the focus is very much on heating houses. The huge spike in energy prices has forced many, myself included, to fall back on open fireplaces and wood/log burners to keep the cost down. Many invested in a new log burner. And now they are the target.
“recent reports of a crackdown on wood-burning stoves that fail to meet the UK emissions standards. Households now found in violation of these air pollution rules could face “on the spot” fines of £300. The Government has ordered local councils to use powers from a law passed in 2021 to issue civil penalties for old-fashioned wood-burning stoves that do not meet the UK’s standards for emissions.”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1729080/log-burners-former-mep-lance-forman-net-zero-hypocrisy-britons-fine-wood-burning
Whilst that doesn’t sound so bad there is an ugly side to this.
“The neo-feudal takeover of local councils
Local councils are increasingly contracting out fines for environmental or anti-social behaviour (ASB) offences to private companies working on commission. And this right to extract penalties is subject to fierce competition. For each council contract, companies pledge to issue a certain number of fines per month or year. The more efficient a company’s extraction – the more fines it can issue, and the more of these fines it can get paid or prosecuted – the better its market position.
For a Manifesto Club report released this week, I contacted 94 local authorities about their relationship with private contractors issuing fixed-penalty notices (FPNs). Around a decade ago, there was only one company in the environmental enforcement market. Today, there are at least 10. The higher value council contracts frequently attract multiple bids. Enforcement is not seen as a public service, with penalties issued proportionately and in the public interest. Rather, it is an extractive industry, which is subject to commercial secrecy. “
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/02/01/the-neo-feudal-takeover-of-local-councils/
The full article is well worth a read. If you’ve ever experienced local council parking enforcement….
Governments that can’t be made safe should be banned.
No government can be made safe.
It gets worse: “Hammersmith and Fulham dog walkers without poo bags could be fined
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-63729612
As if it’s going to get better, Peta!
“ to fine dog walkers who cannot produce a dog poo bag on demand.“
The neo-feudal takeover of local councils is very real and we are the cash cows.
and worse still:”A man was hit with a £500 fine and woke to find bailiffs knocking at his door – after a W on his car registration was mistaken for another letter. Steven Ward, 41, was disturbed at his home by workers from enforcement firm CDER Group
Seemingly an ANPR camera fouled up
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/man-hit-with-500-fine-after-w-on-his-car-registration-mistaken-for-another-letter/vi-AA171r2J
even more worser:“Hospital worker chased by bailiffs over parking fines he got while on shift
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/real-life/hospital-worker-chased-bailiffs-over-8089904
what about this one:“A council has been forced to refund more than 1,000 drivers over £100,000 in fines due to a confusing road sign blunder. Lambeth Council agreed to refund at least £106,000 in fines after it admitted that unclear road signs were erected near a school street for six months.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11704941/Lambeth-Council-repay-1-600-drivers-wrongly-fined-admitting-road-sign-unclear.html
or this:“Police stop learner during driving lesson and report instructor
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/1729210/Police-learner-driver-report-instructor
insane:”To add to her woes, police have told her that they can’t investigate unless there is clear CCTV of the crime as it happened.
https://metro.co.uk/2023/02/02/birmingham-nurse-finds-her-vehicle-completely-stripped-by-car-cannibals-18201017/
Campaigners in North Wales are currently defending a bus driver who put his cigarette on the floor to help an elderly passenger off the bus. He had picked up the cigarette before the officer approached him, but nonetheless received a fine.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/02/01/the-neo-feudal-takeover-of-local-councils/
This is only the start
The ubiquitous mainstay of alarmists, ambiguous words such as “may, might, could, possibly,” etc. I’ll sit up and pay attention when they can provide a verifiable >90% numeric probability with an uncertainty of <+/-5%. Anything less than that is unfounded speculation akin to a belief leprechauns.
You’re fighting a losing battle. Witches have been burned on far less evidence.
Burning natural gas or propane for the purpose of heating – be it space heating, cooking, water heater, pool heater, etc. – is vastly more energy efficient than any source of electrical energy. The heat energy content of the gas is almost entirely released at the point of use, with very little in the way of losses. Any steam plant, regardless of how it is powered, is only as efficient as the carnot cycle, which wastes about 70-75% of the thermal energy applied, and it cannot be altered. So called “combined cycle” plants can increase that efficiency, but at much greater expense. Even a combined cycle plant wastes a minimum of 40-50% of the thermal energy input. Plus there are energy losses within the transmission system, plus the thermal energy produced by the appliance is not mostly applied to whatever is being heated but is largely wasted within the environment, creating still more losses.
Because your space heater, similar to a stove flame, will produce temperatures greater than 1,600 degrees, you can safely assume that it is only a matter of time before they come after the NOx compounds coming from your furnace.
I’m 80 years old, and I don’t remember ever using a gas stove. I’ve lived in Australia since 1970 and have always used electric ovens, microwave ovens, and electrically operated air-conditioners for both heating and cooling.
There’s no essential need for gas delivered to homes. I suspect it’s inefficient, although I haven’t delved into the detailed comparisons.
Gas is much cheaper than electricity
Think again
I’ve mostly been cooking with electricity up until now, but now that the government wants to ban gas stoves, I think I will install one!
Today, perhaps. But wait until carbon taxes start driving up the cost of nat gas.
Vincent, here in Norther US gas in necessary to survive. All electric will cause you pain at some point. Either wallet or body.
our gas comes via underground pipes not delivered by truck if that is what you think.
I suspect it’s inefficient, although I haven’t delved into the detailed comparisons.
So nothing to back up your suspicion. As noted, it’s more efficient. And the US is not Australia.
If you’ve ever cooked on a gas stove, you would never want electric again.Except for superior cooking results, consider this:
You turn the stove on, it takes P minutes to warm up enough to fry an egg. Once you’re done, you switch the stove off, and go serve up. The plate remains too hot to touch for R minutes. P and R is roughly equal. Now, which part of the cooking cyclewasted most energy, the waiting for heat, or the thing standing there radiating for half an hour for no good reason? Answer? Who cares, when you can turn a 1600 degree flame on and off in an instant.
Did I mention the superior cooking results?
It is my understanding that professional chefs prefer gas to cook.
Not my experience, and I have used both (and still do have to use a gas hob occasionally). Modern ceramic hobs are almost as responsive as gas and put a lot less heat into the room. They heat up and cool down almost as fast as gas burners. Not quite, but close enough. And in a small kitchen I really do not like the open flames if you have several pots on at once.
The old solid plate electric hobs, maybe you are speaking of them, were much inferior to gas and I would not consider installing one now.
This is family cooking. Commercial is a different matter.
I think the best solution for a family is:
— gas heating and hot water
— electric oven (which should be both fan and resistive)
— ceramic electric hob
A fan oven heats up very quickly, and if it can be combined with a grill you have a very fast and convenient system. Air source heat pumps from what I hear seem to be incredibly expensive to install with all the replacement radiators and pipework, don’t do hot water, and cost a bomb to run.
Gas AGAs are OK too, but the heat put out into the room is oppressive and wasteful in summer even in a large kitchen and they are not controllable, so you have to cook in a completely different way, and they are very expensive and disruptive to install in an existing house. I have lived with a solid fuel AGA and the twice a day filling and emptying gets old pretty fast.
The thing more people would profit from is a pressure cooker. The stovetop ones with sealing vents are excellent (the Kuhn Rikon in particular), and the Instant Pot is very convenient for a countertop cooker, insulated, stainless steel liner and very economical of energy. As well as being an excellent slow cooker.
So, you are not yet quite jiggy with the concept of “load prioritisation” yet?
This is not about cooking, it is about energy, the availability of that energy and the (hopefully) efficient use of that energy. Tell me about your ceramic hob by candle light as we shiver together during the power utility’s redistribution of your electricity quota to someone deemed more worthy than you and your neighbours.
Banning gas is not about health, none of this covidiocy is. There is a faction busy destroying civilisation, so They can rebuild it in the image held in their fevered brains. Their strategy demands that we “…forget how we used to be…” They actually want us to forget what we had, so we can be grateful for what they allot us. They want to make us “…forget our very personality…”!
I am not a professional journalist, I tend not to keep or share references, but every word I quote above, are actual quotes from actual Very Important People, possibly somewhat paraphrased. My memory is better than my desire to impress…or my ability to take libtard whackjobs’ stupid utterances seriously until I see their effects upon my environment. But I’m learning.
In the Hive, there is no Destiny, only Fate, and Baal Gates thinks he is master of your fate. This is an urgent question for all religions and humanist philosophies to address before it is too late.
If long power blackouts become common we will have to adapt. At the moment they are extremely rare and when they happen are of very short duration. Its not a material factor when thinking about cooking. Of course, that may change with the green ‘renewable’ madness. Though I suspect governments will stop before it gets that bad.
Domestic power blackouts, cooking will be the least of our problems! There will be no heat or hot water (because gas or oil boilers need power for the radiator pumps and stored hot water). No light. Won’t be a lot of fun. I suspect governments will reverse themselves if this starts to happen on any scale.
Sigh… With all the money and effort the Bolshies are expending upon you, teaching you to hate, fear and distrust your government, you gonna cling to the myth of “government for the people”? You are obviously not one of them paranoid prepper folk.
Besides, how will your government ‘reverse themselves’ once the power plants come to a grinding halt?
“They actually want us to forget what we had, so we can be grateful for what they allot us.”
A gas stove responds instantly to the control knob, with almost no thermal inertia. That means less waste heat in the home in the Summer, and less load on the A/C unit. It also means less burned food to be thrown away. There are many things to consider when talking about efficiency.
Ceramic hobs are almost as responsive, and a lot more comfortable to use. And very easy to keep clean.
Just what is a “ceramic hob”? I get that hob is a common term for stove (or vice versa if you prefer) but the “ceramic” part is rather unclear. Is the heating element ceramic or are you talking about sealed surface stoves where the heating element is below some kind of glass/ceramic sheet? How could that be faster or more efficient than the exposed metal heating element?
Yes, by ceramic I mean the kind where the heating element is under a glass sheet.
There are three kinds of electric hobs:
(1) The old fashioned solid plate type, where there is a substantial raised metal plate which heats and cools quite slowly due to the mass of the plate. I don’t care for these and would choose gas in preference. They seem to be dying out.
(2) The new glass sheet ones where there is a lamp or heating element underneath. They sometimes have knob controls but more often nowadays are touch controlled. These I find excellent and much preferable to gas, particularly in a small kitchen, they don’t throw out lots of heat into the room and are easy to control and keep clean. The ones I usually use have a low setting that is perfect for slow cooking. The lowest setting on the plate kind is too high for that, at least in the ones I have used. They are not as responsive as gas, but I find them quite adequate.
3) Induction hobs, also under a glass sheet. These do not work by radiating or conducting heat from the hob to the pan, but by directly heating the pan itself by a magnetic field. They work with iron and many but not all stainless steel pans. Not with aluminum ones unless they have an appropriate layer. These are said to be extremely responsive, more than ceramic and probably as much as gas, and very efficient, as its only the pan that is directly heated. Proponents claim they are safer, since the hob itself doesn’t get hot. Maybe. Its heated by the pan, of course, as that gets hot.
There is one large potential disadvantage of induction, which is that anyone with a pacemaker needs to stay well clear of them, so the last time I had to choose a hob type I didn’t want to take the chance and went for the so-called ceramic kind.
I suppose we all cook in our own ways for our own people and any installation requires some adaptation of methods. I was responding to the remark that if you use gas you will never go back. I agree that if the alternative was the old raised plate hobs, that is probably true. My own experience with the ‘ceramic’ ones however has been very positive and quite the reverse. I would now never go back to gas. At least in a domestic setting. I have never cooked professionally.
The only exception might be a big kitchen which didn’t have a 220 volt feed, which might be too disruptive and expensive to justify.
And I would also say, whatever your hob and oven technology, get a pressure cooker, and also a good breadmaker. With a pressure cooker you will find making long-cooking dishes (eg your own stock) a breeze to produce in short order, and with a decent breadmaker you can produce excellent fresh bread every morning with no additives and with a minimum of effort. Easier and cheaper than using the oven.
Again, this is in a small domestic setting. If you need to make several loaves a day a breadmaker obviously isn’t realistic.
If by “ceramic hob” you mean the non-induction glass-top stoves, I find them to be very slow and unresponsive. Not as bad as the old coils, but still not very good.
This is what happens when you base your opinion on emotional response rather than on cold, objective science explorations. Try applying that to the overall CAGW situation, and you soon discover how faulty that whole emotion-driven political agenda is.
“There’s no essential need for gas delivered to homes.”
There’s “no essential need” for 80 year olds either, however, I suspect you’ll agree with me that freedom of choice is societies best option.
A properly installed gas appliance has a vent to the outside. Turn on the exhaust fan!
This is also a case of the Consumer Products Safety Commission not following the National Institutes of Health. The NIH concludes that there is no known cause for asthma, so claiming gas stoves cause asthma is contradictory.
They are back at it. The outright ban created such a S-storm they had to back off from it. Theyb are making an end runby proposing “efficiency” standards for appliances such as stoves, ovens and water heaters among others. You can bet that the net result will be punish those that would continue to choose gas.
ALWAYS forgotten … is that electricity’s production is in large part from combustion of carbon containing compounds, be they natural gas (mostly CH₄ methane), coal or for some remote locations (think Hawaii) oil. That’s not the forgotten part. What is is that the thermal-to-electrical conversion is, at most, 40% efficient.
40% efficient, and rendered markedly less efficient after transmission line-and-transformer losses, delivery losses. Maybe 33% efficient overall.
From a straight electricity-to-heat reverse conversion, without the maintenance nightmare of heat-pumps, conversion is almost 98% though! Sounds great! But… 98% of 33% is still 33%. Compared to over 80% (stoves), 95% (water heaters) and 98% (heaters) heat-of-gas to heat-of-home direct conversion ratings.
Heat pumps are good improvements in electrical-to-air-heating, but because of Physics, can never ultimately reverse the gas-to-electricity generation efficiency to begin with. Overall combined cycle (gas → electricity → heat pump → heat) can achieve over 70% combined cycle conversion efficiency. And that is STILL way less than (gas → heat) direct conversion (paragraph above, end).
THIS IS WHY the green alarmists and the slippery institutes-of-bad-ideas are trumpeting the need for heat pumps. At least the obvious jaw dropping 33% efficiency is corrected to merely 70% efficient overall conversion. And it sounds so sexy to pump heat from the Arctic outdoors to inside the home and ‘get’ a 120% increase in BTUs. But in the end, its still a lie. 70% round-trip conversion.
And this is ignoring that only one’s hot-water heater and one’s centralized space heating can be ‘heat pump’ enabled. The stove and oven cannot. Thus they are swept under the carpet.
ALWAYS forgotten.
Every time.
And it is a really Faustian deal with the Devil.
GoatGuy
Although heat pumps are not much of a winner, GoatGuy is overstating his case. Average combined generation, transmission and distribution efficiency of producing electricity from natural gas in the US is 39%. A heat pump that is Energy Star certified has an HSPF at least 8.5, which is an “efficiency” of 249 %. Multiplying .39 by 2.49 means effective efficiency of 97%.
But heat pumps for heating don’t do much good when the outside temp is much below freezing.
The temperatures in my neighborhood have been near 0 degrees F, and the homes equipped with HVAC systems have been easily maintaining indoor temperatures at 70F.
electric heating coils built into most heat pumps.
Without the heating coils, generally 7 to 10 kW I believe (i.e. expensive to run). The air out of the vent is at best lukewarm, even at 50 degrees F outside. It takes much longer to raise indoor temperatures and the moving air will frequently feel chilly rather than providing the pleasant glow of combustion fuel.
What level of insulation is needed to justify the installation costs?
Which locations, world-wide, are heat pumps more prevalent?
Seems like you got yourself some research to do there, pal… Let us know, won’t you?
Donklipstein,
the figures for heat pumps are not efficiency but performance factors, I assume similar to the U.K.’s Coefficient of Performance, which compares heat pumps to electric resistance heating. The dice is loaded from the start as they assume electric resistance heating has a COP is 1, i.e., you get out what you out in. No device does that.
Iain Reid,
Resistors are 100% efficient (COP of 1) at converting electrical energy to heat. Some of the heat goes through an additional conversion to thermal radiation, generally infrared. But inside a building, this infrared generally gets absorbed and converted back to heat. With resistive baseboard electric heat, only a small percentage of the heat becomes thermal infrared, and usually none of that thermal infrared escapes the building before getting absorbed and converted back to heat.
As for COP of heat pumps: The minimum to get Energy Star certification in the US is 2.49 watts of heat delivered per watt of electricity used. The Energy Star standard is HSCP (Heating Season Coefficient of Performance) of 8.5 BTU per watt-hour, divide that by 3.412 BTU per watt-hour yields COP without change of units of 2.49. Although this still means heat pumps are not much of a winner after considering 39% combined generation, transmission and distribution of electricity from the natural gas power plants that will be the ones getting cranked up to power additional heat pumps, I see natural gas proponents here using bad math to overstate their cases.
Obviously, none of the people advocating eliminating NG from homes live north of the 40th parallel and heat their home with a heat pump or electricity.
Hammers can be used to help construct shelter for the homeless, not just in developed countries but all around the world.
Hammers can also be used to break fingers and kneecaps, or even kill people by “stoving in” their skulls.
It is impossible for hammers to be (completely, 100%) “made safe”.
Using the above “logical” argument hammers therefore can be banned.
In a SF story of probably at least 50 years ago, AI (just called robots at that time), with an imperative to serve and protect, banned human use of all metal tools to prevent self injury or use in attacks upon each other by humans.
Yet another political propaganda attack on natural gas in a country that is awash in natural gas. The next move will be to ban the decentralized use of natural gas in homes and small businesses and ban the use of CNG in private automobiles etc.. Think of the hundreds of pictures of urban/suburban natural gas explosions from the past 20 years… When you see all those photos at once in the media you know that a full scale anti-natural gas propaganda campaign is underway. Yet it will be ok to burn NG to power the grid.to heat homes and power EVs etc. We know this is robbing peter to pay paul. So what is the gig?
Very powerful people are worried about all the gas underground in the US. They are also worried that homeowners will become independent electricity produces no longer dependent on the grid.. What if in the next 20-30 years the Dream Battery actually makes it to the big box stores. It would be much cheaper for a home owner to heat their homes and generate electricity using micro-turbine tech than to do solar panels. You simply trade out the old furnace for a new one and walla the home over is now no longer dependent on the grid. This creates significant efficacies over the NG powered grid and reduces overall consumption and demand for hydrocarbon fuel. Isn’t this what the green meanies want?
No they want to demonize natural gas. They don’t want the American Imagination to be captured by dreams of cheap energy and personal independence. The don’t want consumers becoming producers. It’s ok to play games with home solar panels and tax subsidies but real full fledge home power production is a big no no.
For the mean greenie the grid is the social savior of the plant. It is the great leveler.
For the hydrocarbon energy elites….. anything in the foreseeable future that will induce lower consumption and demand is a target.
Home generated electricity is more efficient than grid power by a lot. Especially when NG is used simultaneously to generate electricity and heat water and the home. People generating electricity at home and powering their EV’s is the last thing Greenies or hydrocarbon elites want.
Now there are many little guys in PA who would love to be NG producers and would love to see it flow to homes for off grid power production.
Yes! I was watching a off grid homesteader type reality show awhile back and was amazed by how much gas was accessible by homesteaders relatively easily. In some parts of the country. In this case it was a old water well that had some concentration of gas- they used it to power a electric generator
I was referring to small companies fracking NG. I am not talking about homesteading per se. Any house that has access to NG distribution could with a Next Gen Dream Battery and microturbine generator could simultaneous heat the house and water while generating, storing and distributing on demand all electricity needed for home and EV car and become independent of the grid.
The only thing that is missing is the next gen battery ( it is missing but no one knows how long, it could be a long time but 30 years is a very long time). If the Next Gen battery hit’s the big box stores and the whole thing goes viral, then the demand for natural gas will sink because home based electrical generation is as much as 18% more efficient that grid produced power. Add in heating the house and water….pushes that efficiency significantly maybe as high as 25% And if the world goes EV and people are charging their EV with home produced electricity then oil consumption drops like a rock as EV are in and of themselves more efficient.
This is what is driving the attack on natural gas…10-30 year projected market fear.
I fully expect this is just the beginning of a long range program to disparage natural gas in the mind of the public so the last thing they are thinking about is natural gas.
And the last thing the greens want is for people to become independent of the grid and of their control.
Finally politically, the hydrocarbon elites and the greens do not want the realization of the massive reserves of NG in the US to capture their imagination and for there to be a grass roots full court press deregulate NG and massively increase production.
It’s ok for the utilities to burn NG but not the homeowner because home owners get ideas.,,,it’s the American way.
This is not about health or climate, it is 100% about controlling people, forcing on them what they do not want and that will DAMAGE their health and the environment. And the damage it will do to the restaurant and commercial food processing industries will be catastrophic. And this is intentional, leftists want to drag down human society. Look at all the babies they have murdered over the last 50 years just in America.
It’s about the use of propaganda, misinformation, political action, regulation to control the behavior of the American consumer… As the Greens and the global hydrocarbon elites look at market risk 10-30 years out the anticipate what could go wrong so they use these sort of tactics to nip it in the bud. Yes they want to control us….. but the goal is money and power.
The more urbanized, centralized and dependent we are they more than can control markets… that is it.
And you can be sure that these regulators will prod or pay media production companies to produce scary documentaries and the facts will be completely ignored. Saw one on wind turbine farms in the north see last night. Very impressive but conveniently left out most of the problems of intermittency in a larger grid context. I thought of the millions that will be convinced that these things are “settled science/engineering.”
There’s a math error in the second to last paragraph. With natural gas price at $14.14 per million BTU, a 95% conversion efficiency results in a cost of $14.88 per million BTU of useful heat. That’s still a quarter of the cost of electric energy.
I suspect that if California utilities were allowed to produce a much larger fraction of electricity from CCGT plants and not renewables, the average price of electricity would be such that the energy costs of using a heat pump would be comparable to a gas furnace.
Regarding “For a new 95-percent-efficiency natural-gas furnace or water heater, this translates to a cost of just under $13 per million Btu. California’s 2020 residential electricity price was 20.51 cents per kWh, or a cost of $60.11 per million Btu. California residents can pay over four times as much to operate electric stoves, water heaters, or electric baseboard heat, compared to gas appliances”: Who is proposing baseboard electric heat? Why not run the numbers for heat pumps, which are what is being proposed to replace gas furnaces?
Not all homes are amenable to heat pumps, most commonly because of the climate. In my case, drilling a vertical hole would have to be done in my front yard because the backyard is inaccessible to a drilling rig. However, I already have natural gas lines on the property and a gas furnace, water heater, and clothes dryer. Where is the ‘efficiency’ in abandoning the existing functional energy source and spending thousands of dollars for a new system and appliances?
I actually expect even for California homes amenable to heat pumps, the numbers to be a little against heat pumps. What I am complaining about is the article author comparing gas furnaces to resistive electric heat instead of heat pumps, and using bad math (a 95% efficient gas furnace costing less per million BTU than the raw $ per million BTU of natural gas), to overstate his case. He said “$60.11 per million Btu” for electric heat (true for resistive heat) vs. “just under $13 per million Btu” for a 95% efficient gas furnace.
As for my figures: A 95% efficient gas furnace using gas that costs (article claimed) $14.14 per million BTU costs $14.88 per million BTU to run. Electricity costing 20.51 cents per kWh (article claimed), used to run a heat pump with HSCP (Heating Season Coefficient of Performance) of 8.5 BTU per watt-hour (minimum for Energy Star Certification), costs $24.13 per million BTU to run. Even with HSCP of 9 that I saw a bit of while Googling about this, the cost is $22.79 per million BTU.
Regarding “For example, in 2020 the average price of residential natural gas in California was $14.14 per million British Thermal Units (Btu). For a new 95-percent-efficiency natural-gas furnace or water heater, this translates to a cost of just under $13 per million Btu.”: Isn’t $14.14/million BTU divided by .95, which is $14.88 per million BTU, the cost of running a 95% efficient gas furnace? How can a furnace that is less than 100% efficient cost less than $14.14 per million BTU to run?
it is absolute madness to ban new gas boilers in uk. i am going to start a business with chinese modular boilers. all parts will be modular and replaceable. The initial boiler will just be a mounting and certificate of installaiton of gas boiler. this will be available for £50 before the deadline. After the deadline the ‘boiler’ can be infintiely repaired / replaced a la ‘trigger’s broom’.
In other news: the sky is blue.
Since the opposite is usually true when a leftist speaks, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that actual data shows electric stoves are actually much more dangerous. I have no evidence, except the historical trend of leftist lies.
Consider this: Magnetic fields affect the neural system. The magnetic field around a conductor expands with increased current. Heater elements of all sorts use tremendous power, hence current, hence produces large magnetic fields. At 50Hz, the quarter harmonic of 12,5Hz, your brain may “relax” or get agitated. At 60Hz, the quarter harmonic is 15Hz, correlating to the frequency in an agitated brain.
I leave you with that, go research the whole horror story yourself…
Just for interest’s sake, Volvo recalled a model that had the battery cable running under the back seat, because research indicated an effect on children’s (usually in the back seat) neural system. Motorolla paid a guy 4million bucks back in the 70-80’s to research radio frequencies. They paid him, but publicly denied any knowledge of him or his (very scary) report. They still do.
Nothing is safe so everything can be banned.
Our noses and eyes tell us that cooking food, by whatever means, produces far more particulates and volatile hydrocarbons than an open flame. That is why hoods and fans have been standard in new homes for decades. However, I don’t see the alarmists advocating we stop cooking inside our homes.
yet
Let me guess, another CFL market, a novel coolant, a collusion of government, industry, and non-profit with green fidelity.
1/4th of the world lives in mud huts and burn biomass (wood &/or dung) for heating and cooking. These people face very real in-home pollution that kills millions every year.
That is why they want to ban gas stoves – so that you to may be eventually killed by harmful pollution in your mud hut…
It was another assault on the outer districts.
The COVID response was not about health. The Climate Emergency is not about climate. The Gas stove panic is not about health.
It’s about control. It’s about power. If they can force you to use electric appliances for cooking and heat (banning gas and wood fires, as they are attempting to do) then they can disable your ability to cook or heat your home at a moments notice. Having my power go out yesterday evening and not come back on until well after midnight, a gas cooktop was quite handy, and if it was cold my wood fire would have been used (It’s Summer here, they’ll have you believe, although it was 9C by 8:30pm).
Beware the Digital ID, that is the keystone to the sort of authoritarian control that Orwell could not even dream of. They will use a Digital ID to control your access to energy, money, food, travel, everything.. all tied in to your social credit score. If you don’t “do the right thing” (which just means supporting the collectivist government) then you will be punished. This is, of course, for your own good. Your caring authoritarian government is just trying to help you make the “right” choices.
One more example of
lying and cheating pseudo scientists preaching the false god of CAGW.
I grew up in a place known as Levittown in Pennsylvania.
We all had the same appliances in our houses:
No gas appliances in the whole area unless someone with money installed them.
Two of my brothers are asthmatic. We never lived anywhere that used gas, LPG or propane.
I had friends with asthma, again, no gas appliances in Levittown.
Sounds to me that “Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced that indoor gas stoves emitted harmful pollution” has been using institutional bias and bad statistics in their calculations.
none of my business, but have you heard of this?
https://healthfreedom.news/2022-10-06-cdc-aluminum-vaccines-causes-childhood-asthma-autism.html
More and more people are waking up to the reality of vaccines, and talking about gas ovens are suddenly popular again?
Said this before
But I have lots of house plants (including the prime minister of canada).
My gas stove releases water and co2 meaning my plant are happier which means I’m happier.
“There’d be no gas stoves if it wasn’t for racism”
Charles Schumer, leader of US Senate, stated Democrats aren’t coming for our gas stoves. But NY, his state is as are others. Plus their attacks on natural gas as a fossil fuel!! Natural gas is the most important factor that has reduced carbon emissions in the US since 2008.