Why is a ban on gas furnaces so important, when you can burn coal in your stove and oil for heating and both are still very common (at least here in germany)?
I thought gas is way better than coal or oil, because it burns cleaner?
I thought gas is way better than coal or oil, because it burns cleaner?
But yeah, my understanding is that burning gas in your home produces less CO2 than burning coal or oil, but they ALL pollute (and gas often has methane leaks from pipelines which is worse for warming than CO2). Whereas a heat pump emits nothing, is ~3x more efficient than gas combustion, and will increasingly cause no emissions as the grid is powered by renewables.
It's far better to emit NO pollutants in your home (and cars!) than to emit less, especially since polluting home infrastructure is replaced every ~15 years and pollutes for its entire lifetime.
Generally, yes, but of course it always depends on specific circumstances.
Read up on heat pumps! They're really cool. And yes they're like air conditioning units that can cool and also heat. In addition to heat pump space heating there are also heat pump hot water heaters and heat pump clothes driers and it seems both are more efficient and non-polluting.
It feels magical that they can pull heat from outside in the winter, but that's what they do! The more recent units can even do it in very cold temperatures.
So gas is the bigger problem to resolve. We need to get rid of them all eventually.
Totally agreed! But for me I'd love to strike the word "eventually" from the sentence. At this point we're in such deep shit that we have to move more quickly than "eventually" in my opinion. :)
It's far better to emit NO pollutants in your home (and cars!) than to emit less, especially since polluting home infrastructure is replaced every ~15 years and pollutes for its entire lifetime.
The problem in the UK is that many houses are very old and poorly insulated. Passivhaus basically needs to be the standard (if it isn't already).
I don’t even know where I’d go to buy coal, to be honest. For most of America the closest we get to the stuff is a charcoal grill.
0 - 130,000 households two years ago, half in Pennsylvania.
Well here in germany in winter time, you can buy 10 kg packs in allmost every supermarket. Probably a side effect of the still big ongoing open coal mining. But its gotten quite rare in comparison, when I was a child, it was common for many houses, to have coal in the basement and regular getting a truck for resupply. Now it is mostly for additional heat.
Outside of a specialist delivery company (“high quality bituminous”, heh), I’d have to travel to a feed & seed store in the nearby farm country to buy coal for heating ($9 for a 40lb bag of anthracite). They’re out of stock, but it’s not clear to me if that’s because of supply chain issues, or because nobody ever actually wants it in my area.
Meanwhile firewood is super easy to get. It’s available everywhere, including in huge stacks outside our grocery stores. I can even buy it from my city at $90 a cord, but it needs to be split.
It is. I lived in a small town in a river valley some years ago: you couldn't open the windows in late afternoon, when everyone started to burn their dirty fires.
Actually, between people burning whatever looks wood-like and coal, I'd probably prefer the coal.
The model I’m considering purchasing has an actual catalytic converter in it, just like a car, to ensure combustion is as complete as possible.
It's 2021. Burning wood makes no sense from a global warming and certainly not from a public health perspective.
A badly started coal fire? That is bad.
It's very surprising to me that people are still burning coal in their home, outside of very rural areas. Same thing with oil (except with cars of course).