Climate goals could make gas heating obsolete. So why do gas companies keep adding customers? Building more gas infrastructure is like investing in video rental stores 15 years ago, says expert
Because we live in Canada and our design day heating energy requirement is typically far greater than our design day cooling energy requirement. Add in the fact that best pump efficiency falls way off at design day heating (to half or less of design day cooling) and you end up with equipment that may be able to do heating and cooling but is way oversized for cooling, so lots of people opt to save capital (and potentially maintenance) money by relying on gas heat for the coldest days.
Because water heating with heat pumps is currently garbage on the residential scale... the heat pump capacity on residential water heaters is quit low, which is fine for keeping the tank warm but not for dealing with a half decent draw, so they all include full electric capacity which means you need the service size and associated operating costs to go along with it. Commercial heat pump water heating isn't much better, it may get better once CO2 or propane take off as a refrigerant here.
Because more and more buildings are putting in emergency generators, which require either natural gas, propane or fuel oil. One of those is significantly easisr to install and maintain than the other two.
Although this might be accurate, what would be the true cost of gas if you removed all the subsidies and added the cost of fossil fueled warming from the continued GHG release? What will be the cost of gas if climate change really starts to pop and we undergo radically accelerated decarbonization? What is the projected cost of renewables + batteries + electric heating in 5, 10 or 20 years?
These are more relevant details regarding the building of infa that should be built to last, and is costed to last, for several decades.
I just had to buy a new gas furnace and air conditioner, so, with my mind on global warming, I asked the furnace guy what it would cost to put in a heat pump. He said he has put in quite a few, but the costs have gone way up. He also said that in our climate I would need an electric back-up furnace for winter because a heat pump loses efficiency quickly at temps below -15C. The cost was going to be around $30,000, compared to $15,000 for the new gas furnace and AC. Also, electricity in Ontario is an incredibly expensive way to heat, so that would be a big extra monthly cost in the winter. An in-ground geothermal system would be about $65,000, he said.
It isn't hard to see why gas is still popular, and that it will continue to be far into the future unless we undertake some kind of national project to replace our fossil fuel infrastructure with nuclear for the needed electricity and then convert our cars and homes over to full electric.
Did you asking about getting a heat pump to run the AC coil above the gas furnace instead of just a regular outdoor AC unit? The cost difference in hardware is only a few hundred dollars at most (for same sized unit, maybe $500-$700 if you are going up a size to hear for longer into the winter), installation cost should be the same and while it doesn't eliminate gas burining you can reduce it by probably 50% - 70%.
This is basically what I'm in the process if doing, except rather than a furnace replacement I'm only doing it to add AC because I currently don't have AC on my furnace.
Finally, someone that knows what the fuck they're talking about. Heat pumps are fine in a lot of the world, but when you have to put a furnace in anyway because a heat pump can't deal with actual cold winters, you might as well just have the furnace.
Yep, in Sask right now natural gas is about 1/7 the cost of electricity, which means at best a heat pump only costs about 2x as much to run as a modern gas furnace. Maybe as our grid transitions to renewables and carbon prices rise those costs will become even or shift towards benefiting heat pumps, but I suspect at this point you’re not going to hit break even over the typical life of a heat pump. Much more affordable to stick with gas for now, and maybe start moving to heat pumps 10 years from now. Same argument for water heaters, gas is going to be cheaper than a heat pump for most cases. Maybe new builds lean towards a heat pump because it doesn’t need venting which minimizes HVAC needs, and/or if a person has a solar system that minimizes their electricity costs.
Because water heating with heat pumps is currently garbage on the residential scale.
Also because we're already stressing electric infrastructure with what we use now, and few plans to add capacity in any reasonable amount to deal with the massive increase in population, plus electric cars, AC during heat waves etc let alone home heating.
Gas is efficient for heating, and there's plenty of other stuff we can and need to look at before we replace that.
Also because we’re already stressing electric infrastructure with what we use now
This is propaganda.
On the hottest day last week Ontario hyrdo demand was ~24000MW, last night it went as low as 12000MW. There is room to almost double the baseload in Ontario, with actually smart appliances and controls (not SmartTM shit) a ton of fossil fuel heating loads could be replaced with electric without needing any grid level upgrades.
The boat salesman says you need a boat.
YOU pay for the infrastructure, YOU pay for the maintenance, YOU pay for the gas. Why would they stop now?
"Growth at any cost" is a great motto for corporations, and cancer.
Because number has to go up. Always. Forever. Unending.
Because money.
That's great for climate goals, but can someone tell me how we're supposed to heat our homes? Electricity?
Climat change won't magically remove heating needs. It will bring hotter summers, colder winters, bed weather etc.
Heat pumps sounds like a good way forward. I haven't looked into the cost to replace a heater in a home, but I guess new homes could just have them installed by default.
What about natural gas use in home cooking/restaurants? Surely, you can't just replace that easily.
EDIT: And what about heating water? I mean, natural gas is used for more than heating the space in a home.
Um, yes? Heat pump until -15C, baseboards for the relatively fewer days that go below that. Plus good insulation.
In Quebec we have cheap hydroelectric of course, but I mean, between nuclear power, renewables and hydro, that's basically how.
Synthetic methane.
The problem is, they aren't going anywhere. They'll just funnel money to politicians to stop any attempt to stop them.
Annnnnd this is exactly why we need the carbon tax.
Probably same reason as here in Australia.
The gas companies have managed to create a multifaceted cult where they've brainwashed people into thinking electricity is unclean (despite things like heat pumps being 500% efficient), unreliable and expensive.
Also, it helps that people who paid too much for their ICE cars are scared and they know that their cars will increasingly drop in value as people transition away from gas and fossil fuels.
I don't see a lot of people worrying about their cars devaluing. Except for the recent blip, most cars devalued fast, and the cars that held value before didn't retain it because of their utility.
Natural gas infrastructure and heating could be transitioned to hydrogen or biogas.
Most hydrogen is produced from natural gas so would not really be a replacement for the foreseeable future. Gas infrastructure is not designed for transporting hydrogen so leaks would be significant. Hydrogen can also penetrate into steel piping and cause it to crack and deteriorate more rapidly.
Biogas, sure if there were enough production available.
Because eastern Canada still needs the oil subsidies from the Prairies.
Forestry just isn't cutting it out there, and like it or not, the country needs money.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In 2022, buildings accounted for 13 per cent of the country's emissions, making them the third biggest source of greenhouse gases by sector, after oil and gas and transportation.
It was overseen by provincial and territorial regulators whose key goal was to ensure safe and reliable energy at fair rates for customers.
It aimed to incentivize developers "to choose the most cost-effective, energy-efficient choice," but the board was overruled by the Ontario government, so the original plan will go ahead.
Kate Harland, lead author of the Canadian Climate Institute report, said utility regulators' mandates should be changed to include climate targets, as has been done in the U.K. And they could change "obligation to serve rules" in order to consider alternative technologies, such as electrification, energy efficiency measures or thermal networks to provide heating to customers.
It is the perfect method to allow gas utilities to transition and keep or increase their annual profit, while at the same time reducing the customer's energy bills, according to Schulman.
Harland says current incentives alone won't drive down customer demand for gas quickly enough and energy policies need to change.
The original article contains 1,091 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I prefer cooking on a gas stove. 🤷♂️
I like the taste of dolphins. 🤷♀️
What do they taste like?
We can make synthetic methane with renewable energy though. I don't have a problem with building such infrastructure becsuse it can be used with renewable energy
Unless the round trip efficiency of synthesized methane (synthesis, transportation and re-capture) is better than solar/hydro/nuke electricity it doesn't make sense build our own hydrocarbons. There are also the cumulative health effects of burning methane in your house and that it is serious greenhouse gas.
Natural gas heating is very efficient and huge BTUs for low cost. When you live where it actually gets cold, it's important. As is heating water. Cooking at restaurants also important.
Not everything is binary. We don't need 100% renewables and 0% gas and 0% plastic and 0% ICE vehicles. Renewable energy is 68% in Canada or 20% in the USA in terms of energy production. Getting those USA numbers to 50% or both to 80% is more important.
FYI, in the USA natural gas is about 32% of the USA's energy use. 15% of natural gas is used by residences. That's 4.8% of the power. Which means this entire debate goes out the window if you just installed 5% more solar or wind energy.
Making people fight and become tribal over trivial things that mean nothing is an easy way to prevent anything from happening. Idiots are fighting over trying to reduce 4.8% of energy that is perfectly fine at what it's doing. Meanwhile the natural gas companies are happy to keep supplying the remaining 27% of the USAs entire power via gas, and not a damn thing is being done. Use your energy to get that 27% down to 22% and you've done better than you ever will with demanding residences be built with shitty alternatives.
We actually do need 0% emissions and 100% renewables.
We actually do need 0% emissions and 100% renewables.
Yes. The sooner the better.
But on the way there we have to take the wins we can get and not let perfect be the enemy of good.
Which is not physically possible as most modern life relies on things that are not renewable.
The little that is done to reduce on a personal scale is meaningless compared to what is needed to be done globally and by industry.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't do your part. But it's stupid to believe any of it will help at all. At best it causes discourse for no reason. At worst, you're being played as a fool by large corporations to put off actual change longer and longer.
And just because it seems Lemmy can't seem to understand not everything is binary, I have had 10KW of solar for 15 years. I have had hybrid cars for 20 years. I've had pure electric cars for 13 years. I am one of the few that have installed heat pumps. I also have electric (solar) powered radiant water heating because water is a good energy store. I do way more than your average person. But I'm not stupid enough to think "0 emmisions" is possible. And nobody after a 5 minute google shouldn't understand commercial and industrial energy usage versus residential usage.
Not everything is binary. We don't need 100% renewables and 0% gas and 0% plastic and 0% ICE vehicles.
As a species, we need to get to zero emissions, and ideally negative numbers. It's easy to point fingers at others and then do nothing, but there's too much of that going on right now. Any reduction is a good thing.
I have an air source heat pump for my house and a heat pump water heater. Even in the dead of winter at 0F it kept my house just as warm as always and my water was hot. Heat pumps are not "shitty alternatives" any longer. Maybe in Alaska they would struggle but anywhere else and they work just fine.
If we want to honestly improve the climate then it is REQUIRED that we become carbon negative, not just net zero. And every little bit of emission that is prevented is a lot of power that isn't needed later on to suck that carbon back out of the air.
You can complain that big companies aren't doing enough to cut emissions and I agree, but that doesn't mean we should wait till they clean up their act to start working on ours.
There are also many ways to build a more efficient building envelope and insulation is one of the cheapest things that goes into a house. That makes the heat pumps even more viable in more climates.
I also love how people love to hate on heat pumps when there's so many shit box homes with electric baseboards wasting tons of power.
But then fracking.
Gas is cheap, gas is efficient, gas is clean, and gas is reliable.
If you want your electric bill to be ludicrous switch to electric heat.
Gas is cheap and it is fairly efficient (debatable) but the rest of your comment is silly. My wife and I and a child of 5 live in a 1000sqft house (two floors total 2k sqft) and heat and cool with a heat pump. Electric on demand water. Nothing crazy about the building as far as insulation and air sealing. 2012 build-to-code. Our electricity bills are NEVER over $200 a month and usually under $150 a month. We haven't had a power outage in two years and the last one was scheduled for about 1 hour.
If you want to argue for gas make better points. Electricity is cheap and reliable. I don't disagree that gas is cheap also and that we shouldn't entirely abandon gas and I'm a realist in thinking we can't eliminate it entirely and suddenly.
What are the gas and electricity rates in your area? In Sask, we’re paying about $0.16/kWh for electricity and about $6.40/GJ. There’s about 278 kWh in a GJ, so the electricity cost works out to about $44/GJ, or about 7 times the cost of gas. A good coefficient of performance for a heat pump seems to be about 3, and modern gas furnaces are easily above 90% efficiency so the actual cost difference for gas to electric heat is about 1:3.
Now, newer houses are better insulated, so your heating load on a 2012 build is going to be a lot lower than a 1977 build. You also didn’t mention your heat source. Ground source pumps are pretty good efficiency year round, but cost a lot for the initial install, while air-source pumps have a large seasonal variation in their efficiency, which is particularly troublesome in central/northern Canadian climates.
The more infrastructure they lay and the more customers they connect, the harder to shut them down. The more bail-worthy they become.
Yeah they're trying hard to achieve the "too big to kill" status, like shamu.
Shamu would have succumbed to a .308 to the brain pan. There ain't shit that is "to big to be killed", just those unwilling to do the killing.