Natural Gas: Follow the science?

We must take note of the national kerfuffle about gas stoves that has been boiling over this week.  It's totally pertinent to B'game because our last city council bought into the climate hype and instituted a "reach code" such that new construction can't have any natural gas--not just stoves, but water heaters, furnaces, and barbeques.  No gas for you!  Now the Feds are making similar noises and then backtracking as the WSJ notes

A Biden appointee on the Consumer Product Safety Commission explicitly threatened to ban gas stoves based on dubious evidence of public-health harm. “This is a hidden hazard,” said commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”  After withering public criticism, including by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, the CPSC Chairman denied any plan to ban, and the White House said President Biden also doesn’t want to ban gas stoves. But that’s cold comfort given that the climate left does want to ban them, and progressive cities and states are doing it.

One might ask what is the science behind gas phobia?  Well, today the SF Chronicle actually let a letter to the editor slip through that is pretty clear on the science:

There has lately been a lot of concern about gas ranges and how they can harm indoor air quality, but some of this is too fast and too furious.  As an active researcher in indoor air quality, there can be no doubt that gas cooking produces nitrogen dioxide and that this is bad for respiratory health but the level of concern is far higher than the data show the situation actually warrants. 

Cooking is likely the most polluting thing done in homes. It produces lots of contaminants, regardless of the heat source. Switching to electric may not make the sum total significantly better.  The solution that works regardless of the type of cooking is using your range hood when cooking. Range hoods have been required in California for a long time. Studies have not shown that there would be any significant difference in net harm between gas and electric cooking if you actually use range hoods when cooking.

Max Sherman, retired senior scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

I'll bet if you were one of the 2.4 million PG&E customers that lost power over the last two weeks you were thankful you had a gas stove and some matches even if your range hood or downdraft vent didn't work.  Open a window and enjoy a cup of tea or a bowl of soup.

Comments

[Paloma Ave]

Could former organized labor leader, Richard Louis Trumka, being trying to drum up work for union electrical workers?

After all, many homes with gas stoves do not have 240-volt outlets needed to power electric stoves.

[JP]

I have a friend who wanted "to do the right thing" and go electric. Called an electrician and found out that not only did he need a couple of new 220 outlets but his whole panel was undersized and needed to be replaced. "The right thing" turned out to be gas. LOL

[Joe]

And right on cue, Belmont weighs in with more sheep-like behavior regarding a natural gas reach-for-your-wallet code. Check out the little fascist they have elected to "steer the populace":

Vice Mayor Davina Hurt said the ordinance will help the state end the sale of fossil fuel cars by 2035.

“I’m fully supportive of reducing our carbon footprint through transportation and getting ahead of what’s going to be the future, which is everyone is going to pretty much have EV chargers, and I think if we start steering our populace in that direction, sooner than later, it will just be easier in the future,” Hurt said.

https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/belmont-officials-seek-more-electric-in-homes/article_66b6820e-9640-11ed-96ec-cbc61c06177a.html

Want to know what is wrong with our state, our county and our cities? It's electing people who thing they SHOULD STEER THE POPULACE. When you go look up "public servant" in a real reference, it will tell you the POPULACE STEERS THE ELECTED OFFICIAL. One wonder what the recall process is in Belmont and if there are a sufficient number of people who can think for themselves to pull it off with Ms. Hurt?

[Spurinna]

Government for…the people.
Basic.
Wonder if they teach this in school anymore?

[Peter Garrison]

Somebody’s got to run on “Government by and for the people” in Burlingame.

[Joanne]

Hmm wondering how hazardous to our health are cell phones???

And what about all the plastic packaging used when ordering from Amazon??

How great is all that trash along 101 in San Mateo/Burlingame that hardly EVER gets cleaned up??

Just saying...

[Paloma Ave]

Yet again, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District is trying to take something away in order to justify their existence. They are pigs at the trough, nothing more.

In the past they have wanted your employer to charge you to park at your employer's parking lot. They have wanted to force you to remove your fireplace. Now they want to ban your gas appliances.

I guess a womans right to an abortion is the only thing regulators are in favor of.

Otherwise, you have no right to live your life as you see fit.

[Gerald Weisl]

We have had gas appliances for ages, no? But we have not had seriously poisonous light tubes but for maybe 90 years and perhaps 40 for CFLs which should require careful disposal. Perhaps local governments might consider figuring out a simple and convenient method for those to be dealt with (as long as they are intent on saving the world).
**********
With the recent storms and numerous power outages, how do these anti-gas advocates suggest citizens manage to cook and stay warm when the electricity is out for a day, two or three?
**********

[Peter Garrison]

Can’t use wood fireplaces during those frigid nights when there’s the inversion layer making the sky grey.

So people were advised to change to natural gas.

We did.

Oopsy.

[MBGA]

I think it will be okay to burn books, though.

[Joe]

The Electrician Full-Employment Act is coming. Check out the comments at the end of this snip from the Comicle article:

One major obstacle to the proposed regulations is clear, however: electrical capacity in homes. Because installing electric water heaters and furnaces will increase load demand, some older homes will need bigger electrical panels.

Mike Kapolnek, a retired engineer who lives in Sunnyvale, has been complaining to the air district about potential unintended consequences for months. He said most homes built before the late 1970s don’t have 200-amp panels, the level that many electrical engineers say is ideal to support a fully electric single-family home, including appliances and vehicle charging.

Kapolnek said he worries that if the rule doesn’t include an exception for homes with old panels, it could force some to leave their homes. The process for PG&E to process electrical panel retrofits can take many months. Such upgrades also easily cost $2,000-$5,000.

He and his wife are in the process of having a new panel installed — a proactive move on their part — and he expects it will take eight months for PG&E to approve the upgrade.

“They can’t even support the smaller number of upgrades going on now,” Kapolnek said. “(The rule change) makes sense, but it needs to be done properly. It needs to be managed like a gargantuan public-works project, and it doesn’t seem to be.”

Nudd said concerns about the need for electric panel upgrades are why the air district is seeking to delay implementation. He said technology in the sector is rapidly evolving and reducing load demand.

Laura Feinstein, sustainability and policy director for SPUR — the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association — said the concern about electric panels in homes is a knee-jerk reaction. She said there are already a host of relatively cheap devices, including circuit sensors and smart current sensors, that allow homeowners to switch power between high-demand electrical appliances, such as water heaters, dryers and vehicles, as they use them.

“There’s a lot of ways in which people have been overestimating how many homes are going to need a new panel,” she said.
----------------------
Sure. Let's buy, install and maintain/fix a bunch of sensors and switches all over our houses. Sounds like a great plan.

[Paloma Ave]

Lead article in San Mateo Daily Journal today "City cooling on electrification".

San Carlos officials have decided to represent the interest of their constituents, instead of trying to further their own political careers.

Hopefully, other Bay Area cities will 'smarten up' too?

And please let the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to go back to JUST collecting their paychecks and stop trying to dictate how we should be living.

[Joe]

If this weren't so sad, it would be funny. I was chatting with a friend from Palo Alto today. He recently did a big remodel of his home and went "all-electric". (Yes, he's several decades younger than me :-)

So I ask him how it's working out. He says "I probably should have done more reading on the subject". Cost aside (capital and operating expenses) which were notably higher, the heat pump just ain't cuttin' it. C'est la vie.

[Joe]

We got us some rocket scientists here:

San Francisco Chronicle: Interestingly, frequent outages may hurt the state’s electrification efforts. Residents who experienced public safety power shutoffs had a relatively high interest in buying fossil fuel generators, compared to residents in nearby neighborhoods without outages, according to research from UC Santa Barbara professor Leah Stokes. They also had less interest in buying electric vehicles, Stokes found.

Ultimately, the responsibility falls on utilities to upgrade their infrastructure, McPherson said.

Utilities are responsible for outages caused by damage to substations or power lines, such as those from toppled trees in the January storms. In response to both wildfire and storm risk, PG&E is undertaking vegetation management and building stronger poles, said Aaron August, PG&E vice president of utility partnerships and innovation.

The utility is also undergrounding 10,000 miles of power lines in high-fire-risk areas, August said. Undergrounding, though, is an expensive, and thus limited, fix: It costs PG&E up to $6.1 million per mile of power line, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.

[Peter Garrison]

2;4/23
Electricity out again downtown Burlingame.

Jeez.

[Phinancier]

Senators Ted Cruz and Joe Manchin introduced a bill on Thursday that would block a federal agency from banning the use of gas stoves even though there are no plans to outlaw them.

The move comes amid fierce public debate over the health and environmental impacts of the cooking appliances that burn fossil fuel and over the broader role of natural gas in fighting climate change.

Cruz, a Texas Republican, and Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, teamed up to float the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act, a bill that would prevent the Consumer Product Safety Commission from banning gas stoves.

The agency has said it has no plans to ban the appliance but its top commissioner, Richard Trumka Jr., caused an uproar last month when he told Bloomberg News that natural gas stoves are “a hidden hazard” and suggested they should be banned.

[Joe]

This guy Gavin cracks me up:

Federal probe sought for natural gas prices:

Gov. Gavin Newsom called on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to look into market manipulation, anticompetitive behavior or other activities as the cost of the resource has skyrocketed, prompting shockingly high energy bills.

[Spurinna]

Councilmember Beach’s tag-line, “It’s the right thing to do,” forestalls debate by labeling opposing views as inherently “wrong.” (SMDJ 2/15)

What’s right is for the government to stay out of my home.

[Cassandra]

Love the remark in the SF CHRONICLE along the lines of:

“Can I bathe my baby with hot water tonight? Oops. Windy night! Tree fell across the power lines again. No hot water and no alternative to heat the cold water for days.”

Stay out of my bathtub.

[Joe]

In the tradition of asking for city council help and leadership like here: https://www.burlingamevoice.com/2020/02/banning-natural-gas-in-bgame.html#comments

I have crafted some questions for our council regarding furnace replacement. This just went to [email protected]

Dear Council,

I have been pondering how I might comply with a possible ban on replacing my gas furnace with electric heat in the event of either a City of Burlingame or Bay Area Air Quality Management District ruling to do so. I have some “known unknown issues” in doing so which you may be able to clarify.

For this application, I have an indoor wall-mounted furnace of the type that has been in use all over California for decades. It is a relatively new unit that is rock-solid reliable with minimal maintenance and measures 66” H x 16” W x 6” D. The gas is fed at the bottom and vents from a top flue that goes through the wall, through the second story wall and through the roof. It is controlled by an external, remote-to-the-furnace Emerson thermostat of the older millivolt design that only controls gas furnaces.

Some questions arise should I have to replace it with electric. Would I be able to find a similar size and capacity indoor unit? If so, I would I then have to run new wiring from the panel through multiple walls to the unit. Would the old gas feed be capped and left in the wall or would dry wall need to be cut, patched, taped, sanded, primed and painted to match? Similarly, what would become of the old vent? Should it just be left in the wall like the skeleton of some long-dead rodent?

At the roof exit, should I expect to engage a roofer to remove the vent, patch the plywood and install one or two square feet of shingles? There are probably plenty of roofers looking for that size job, but I would have to get bids.

Would I have to replace the thermostat? If so, what if the millivolt wiring is insufficient to control the new electric unit? That would seem to involve another patch, tape etc job, however small it might be? One would hope that the matching paint is still around and usable.

There are several additional questions should I determine that there is no suitable indoor unit, and an outside heat pump is required. Aside from where to locate the outside unit and how to power it, it appears one has to cut through the exterior wall to feed the indoor “head unit” that would likely be located in a different place than the prior wall furnace? That work would appear to make patching, taping, etc look like a simple DIY project.

Given the world-class weather in Burlingame, I have never considered having air conditioning. It appears most heat pumps also act as air conditioners with the associated cost and complexity of refrigerant, thermostats, etc.

If the city has studied all of these issues and cost estimates, I would be most interested in gaining access to that information. This is the much simpler application on my property. I may write again to understand what changes would be needed for the more complex integrated water heater, forced hot water/radiator application.

Best regards,
Joe Baylock

[Peter Garrison]

And, respectfully request that the council first make the modifications in their home(s) and share the money and time spent for these modifications.

[JP]

Power flicker just now. Router took awhile to restart. Not sure about the heat pump!! :-0

[Peter Garrison]

Cooking with gas as we speak…

[Paloma Ave.]

I believe our councilmembers need to be reminded of what their responsibilities are.

1) Keep the city as crime free; 2) Keep our city running smoothly; 3) Keep our city a desirable place to live in.

What not to do.

1) Don't inflict what you want or think on the citizens of Burlingame.

Can I make that any clearer?

[Paloma Ave.]

Hey Duff Beach - Do you remember when you told us it was only going to be new construction? Well, do you?

How about having a chat with Emily. Did she lie to you too?