Gas appliances would be banned in new homes under ordinance considered by LA City Council

[IcyPeas]

(Also posted this in General Discussion)

Is this being proposed anywhere else? I like my gas stove. And isn't electricity more expensive?

LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- The Los Angeles City Council voted Friday to have multiple city departments develop a plan for the implementation of a proposed ordinance that would require all new construction of buildings in Los Angeles to be zero-carbon.

Buildings in Los Angeles account for 43% of the city's greenhouse gas emissions, more than any other sector, according to Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who is leading the effort.

Under her proposal, new zero-emission construction would not allow gas lines, with heating systems and other appliances instead being by operated by electricity. Appliances in the buildings would also have to be energy efficient.

continued in link :
https://abc7.com/zero-carbon-los-angeles-city-council-buildings/11904323/

[msongs]

1. and gas is an earthquake fire hazard

[jimfields33]

2. About time. This needs to be country wide

I’d love to see the savings to our planet from this. Carbon savings alone would be extremely dramatic. Thank you California!!!!! Always doing the right thing.

[VMA131Marine]

3. Remember also that most new homes in CA

are required to have solar panels so this makes a lot of sense.

[OnlinePoker]

4. New homes, but what about restaurants?

Most chef's swear by gas as their heating source.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. I really prefer a gas stove,

and that's what I have now, and hope to have in any future home. Clearly, those who push for electric appliances know essentially nothing about cooking.

[OnDoutside]

6. I agree that gas cooking is much better, but I've used an electric hob

for the last 20 years and it's ok.

[CentralMass]

7. "We need to talk about your gas stove, your health and climate change"

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/07/1015460605/gas-stove-emissions-climate-change-health-effects

[hunter]

8. That's an excellent link.

Thank you!

When the electronics of our old "contractor grade" gas range failed my wife and I decided to buy a new range rather than pay a ridiculous sum to repair a range that was crap when it was new.

The stove burners still worked, but the oven and clock did not, giving us some time to argue about a new range so long as we were not baking.

I do most of the cooking in our house and wanted an electric range with an inductive stove top but my wife vetoed the idea.

"Cooking with gas" is still a thing with her.

My parents used to live in a place without natural gas service. The house had a heat pump, electric water heater, and electric range. They got a propane service exclusively to fuel a new gas range.

I don't get it. I notice the air pollution every time I turn on a gas stove or oven. Cooking with gas seems to eventually coat everything in the kitchen with a sticky brown film at a much greater rate than electric. I have better things to do than scrub stoves and wash kitchen cabinets. I don't want to think about that stuff in my lungs.

But the bigger issue is natural gas itself. We need to quit that stuff. I think it's the most dangerous energy source there is because most people somehow think it's "clean."

There's enough natural gas in the ground to destroy the world as we know it. Gas is destroying earth's natural environment right now. It's best we leave it in the ground.

For people who feel they must cook with gas, I suppose we could use synthetic bottled gasses like dimethyl ether (DME), which is very similar to propane. That fuel would be carbon neutral if it was synthesized from atmospheric or oceanic carbon dioxide using nuclear power.

Some people might also suggest synthesizing DME from agricultural and forestry byproducts but biofuels in general have a huge environmental footprint. It's generally better to return "waste" products like sawdust and straw back to the land.

[CentralMass]

14. Thank for the great reply. Back in MA when bought our house

in the late 80's it had this massive 110 gallon electric hot water heater and electric range. We had been renting an apartment in one of Worcesters famous "3-deckers" that had a gas stove and had gotten used to cooking on it. A local farm store cooperative that also supplied propane had a deal on a propane hot water heater where they would come in and install it, the tank, and connect to it and up to two appliance for free. The deal was you needed to pay a fee of (I think it was $5/month) for 5 years, that included annual servicing, then you owned the equipment. So we went out and bought a fairly high end gas stove that was ~$1,000, which was a lot at that time. It had all electronic ignition. They installed the 100 gallon tank at the back of the house under our 2nd story deck. They ran black pipe from the tank into the basement then soft copper to the hot water heater and up through the ceiling to the gas range. It was really an advanced stove and pleasure to cook on but it was not super reliable. The ignitor for the oven was sort of a gloplug heating element that would heat up. When it got to temperature a bimetallic valve would open up and the gas would ignite. Over time it wouldn't work that well and the oven would take a long time to light during which
time it seem to leak a bit of propane. I always felt dizzy any time I spent a lot of time cooking or washing dishes in the kitchen. The cost for a service call to replace that ignitorvwas insane so I bought one for $50 or $60 bucks and installed it myself.. Over the the years tte price for the ignitor doubled and the replacement seemed to be inferior to the original and I probably had to replace it once/year. Well anyway to cut to the chase oir propane vontract got sold and bought several time until a disreputable company bought it. They were charging way over market price and playing games with the automatic delivery. So one weekend I hit critical mass and drove to Home Depot and picked up their best 40 gallon electric water heater. I removed the propane water heater and installed the electric water heater myself and we ordered an electric range . The copper line feeding stove had a "service loop" where the sift copper tubling had 3 loops firming a coil that would allow the stove to be pulled away from the wall for cleaning and maintenance. When removed gas stove to install the electric range we found corrosion on the copper line where the copper fed into the stove inlet valve. It seemed clear that the it had probably been leaking at least some small amount of gas. I was glad to get rid of it.

[hunter]

11. Some of our local landscape contractors have made the switch to electric leaf blowers.

The electric blowers are less noisy and produce no fumes.

The batteries are in the backpack which the blower is attached to by a cord.

I imagine everyone is happier except the small engine maintenance and repair guys.

I don't know how they are handling the battery charging.

My wife bought me an electric leaf blower and it works well. I don't think it could handle the work flow of a typical landscape crew, even with the largest battery.

I just looked at the websites describing these machines and the battery backpacks have a capacity of about 1 kilowatt hour.

Nobody's doing this for altruistic reasons, they're doing it to impress wealthier clients and in anticipation of new California environmental regulations.

[Caribbeans]

15. "The electric blowers are less noisy and produce no fumes"

They don't produce fumes where they are being used.

But ~60% of US electricity comes from burning coal and natural gas.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php

The battery evangelists don't like that fact at all.

True Green: DIY Solar Hydrogen Weed Whacker

[NNadir]

10. I oppose dangerous fossil fuels, but gas is effectively primary energy.

California burns lots of gas to produce electricity, this at a thermodynamic loss. The thermodynamics of this situation and California's coming struggles with its electrical grid suggest that this isn't necessarily an environmental winner.

[hunter]

12. It's about air pollution as much as it's about fossil fuels.

Of course there is always the fantasy that solar and wind energy will magically displace fossil fuels, which is even more preposterous as drought worsens and California is less able to source and sink electrical power moving water about.

[NNadir]

13. That makes sense. The export of air pollution by cities to less populated areas is a well known...

...practice.

[hunter]

16. For a time there were a lot of posts here about building more high capacity transmission lines...

... into California for "wind energy."

Hooray wind energy!

That was always a lie, of course. Mostly these lines would have been used to import cheap and dirty coal power from states with lower environmental standards. Wind power was greenwash.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power imported a lot of power from the infamous Navajo Generating Station which polluted air in Southern Utah and Northern Arizona, sometimes obstructing views in the Grand Canyon with smog.

This plant wasn't shut down and demolished because of the smog, it was shut down because fracked gas was cheaper than coal.

Plus, "everyone knows natural gas is better than coal." Which it's not. Both are killers.