
Berkeley becomes first US city to ban natural gas in new homes - turtlegrids
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Berkeley-becomes-first-U-S-city-to-ban-natural-14102242.php
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mochomocha
I present you the latest NIMBY measure under an environmental pretense!
Brought to you by Berkeley of course.

If they care so much about the environmental impact of natural gas, how about
grandfathering the measure to their own houses VS the tiny fraction of new
housing that gets built every year in Berkeley?

How about _not_ making the new generation living in the Bay Area pay the
burden of a housing-related policy for once?

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pkaye
Check out Berkeley and Oakland property transfer tax rate. $16.10 per $1000 of
property value! Most other cities are $1.10. That adds up to an extra $10k on
every property sale.
$[http://www.californiacityfinance.com/PropTransfTaxRates.pdf](http://www.californiacityfinance.com/PropTransfTaxRates.pdf)

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drewcon
This makes no sense to me. Explain where I have this wrong...

47% of electricity in California is generated from natural gas.

[https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_sys...](https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html)

So about 50% of the electricity in these houses is coming from a gas that gets
burned to turn a turbine to make electricity (and waste heat) that gets sent
down a power line (where some is invariably lost) to go into a house where the
electricity is then turned back into heat (presumably for hot water and
heating the home)?

How is this more efficient than just burning NG for heat directly?

I could understand banning coal burners from homes (if we had any left), as I
believe China is trying to do, but this seems like it will require more energy
not less (yes I realize its a tiny scale).

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fooker
It makes sense as a long term move because now you have a single point of
change to switch to renewables. Suppose there is an unprecedented improvement
in solar efficiency or power storage tech in 5-10 years or a nuclear power
plant gets built. Then you cut natural gas usage to zero at once, which would
have been impossible if all the houses still depended on it.

You can use the same argument for electric vehicles.

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drewcon
Sort of?

We don't use electric vehicles for heat, so they are sort of fuel agnostic
when it comes to where the electricity is coming from; we burn fossil fuels to
make heat or electricity.

The future proofing argument makes some sense for California. Coming from the
Northeast heat is a lot more important, I'll do a new HE Gas Boiler for 12k in
a single family this year, converting from oil...save me probably 2k a year.
If that were electric heat I'd be paying 400% more every year which would be
insane.

[https://www.mass.gov/info-details/household-heating-
costs#co...](https://www.mass.gov/info-details/household-heating-
costs#comparison-of-heating-fuel-cost-effectiveness-)

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Fjolsvith
Agreed. I used to live in Alaska, and when my wife and I bought our first home
there, the furnace was broke and we couldn't afford to replace it right away.
The electric baseboard heaters cost us $900 to run just for that January!

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FourierTformed
I hate cooking with electricity, can't make a decent stir fry with it,
changing the temperature takes a long time. How much of an impact does this
make to a person's carbon footprint?

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tupshin
Use an induction cooktop. Much faster heat times than traditional electric

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dylan604
Sadly, renters don't get much input on any of the appliances. While suggesting
a different type of electric stove is great for people with that control, most
just suffer with the cheapest appliance the landlord could get away with
providing.

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ebg13
You can always put a portable induction top on top of your unused electric
top.

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selimthegrim
Heat diffuser too?

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ebg13
A what? Do you mean one of these things?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_diffuser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_diffuser)

If so, then I don't think you'd ever need one? None of the use-cases for them
seem like they would apply to a good induction stove.

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selimthegrim
No I meant for an electric stove

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ebg13
But the goal is to make your cooktop _more_ responsive, not _less_ responsive.

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babesh
These new houses will probably be at least as expensive as the average house
there just due to the nature of single family houses in the Bay Area.

Cooking during the whole year and heating during the winter will cost more.
Those winter months will be hundreds of dollars more (possibly hundreds of
dollars more per month).

The people living in these places can probably afford it just due to them
being able to buy the house itself.

Makes better insulation, solar panels, and houses designed to soak in heat if
desired more attractive.

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Gibbon1
Non adware/spyware article

[https://www.berkeleyside.com/2019/07/17/natural-gas-pipes-
no...](https://www.berkeleyside.com/2019/07/17/natural-gas-pipes-now-banned-
in-new-berkeley-buildings-with-some-exceptions)

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siruncledrew
Are there occasions where having natural gas available in a house would be
essential?

Aside from an apartment that had a gas stove and gas-powered water heater, the
houses I've lived in always had all-electric, and the overall experiential
difference between the two circumstances was unremarkable (in my opinion).

Hot water worked fine with either a gas or electric water heater, and the
stove was really the only "daily-use" item that had an obvious difference, but
the functionality was fine either way (stuff still got hot on top the burners
or in the oven). If I specifically wanted an actual gas flame for cooking, I
just used a $20 tabletop camping grill with a small propane tank. This
"adjustment" was a very minimal effort way to deal with not having gas pipes.

Overall, if not having natural gas saves infrastructure costs (and tax
dollars) from being spent maintaining natural gas pipes, and also removes any
need to worry about carbon monoxide and having detectors installed, then this
seems like not a big deal to adjust to.

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ebg13
You can heat and cook food during a prolonged power outage, but that's kind of
it as far as "essential" goes.

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AnimalMuppet
You can't heat your house during a power out, even with gas, because the
furnace won't light without power to run the blower (to prevent overheating
and therefore fires). But you _can_ heat at least one room in a power outage
with a gas fireplace (been there, done that - for hours, though not for days).

~~~
ebg13
There are lots of heating systems (steam boilers, for instance) that don't
require blowers. And your gas-heated hot water will also let you continue to
take hot showers.

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wtdata
I don't get it, how do you warm the water? I know you can have an electric
heater that keeps a certain amount of water hot all the time. But isn't that
vastly more wasteful than just quickly warming the water you are using by
burning it using gas?

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jpeg_hero
What about the wok?

