N.Y. Gov. Hochul proposes ban on new gas hookups, to fight climate change | Hacker News Reader

N.Y. Gov. Hochul proposes ban on new gas hookups, to fight climate change

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18 pointsg42gregory24 comments

I always use the gas stoves as a backup to power outages, to cook and make food. This has come handy in 2-3 emergencies already where gas distribution is not disrupted even during a power outage.

A part of me feels nervous becoming so centralized on electricity as a society, even for food.

A propane grill or camp stove serves that purpose pretty well, without requiring the leaky infrastructure.

Not without proper ventilation, please -- which building codes require for gas stoves (which is often overlooked somehow, but that's another issue). People asphyxiate in blizzards every year because this solution is available and doesn't work with a window open.

You should use them outside for cooking. In addition to many buildings with gas stoves not having proper ventilation in the first place, if your power is out your electrically-powered exhaust fan probably doesn't work.

Cooking YouTubers have seem to be getting by with camp style cooking stoves on their countertops just fine for a long time… is the issue that propane is more likely to give of CO compared to methane? Or is it more so that people in blizzards are trying to use these stoves as heat sources in enclosed spaces for a long time?

We have geothermal HVAC and this is one reason why banning gas hookups seems like a very bad idea to me. What we have is essentially an electric heat pump that gets routed through the earth. We love it but during bad winter storms I feel vulnerable by being so dependent on electricity. We haven't had problems so far but if we did it would be very bad. It doesn't seem like a bad thing to allow for multiple ways to heat your home, water, and food. Solar is another possibility but that seems impractical in a lot of scenarios, especially when one of the major reasons for an electrical outage would be storms.

I understand the motivations for wanting to ban fossil fuels but I feel like the best way to do that is to let the market take its course, maybe with positive government incentives. Let people figure out what the best balance of fossil fuel dependency is. Build up the grid to the point where it seems indestructible and convince people that way.

It seems like a bad idea to force increased dependency on the electric grid when there's so many stories about how poor it is in so many places.

>you have been assigned 2 demerits on your social credit score

no one else think it's weird that so many people have come out against gas stoves at the same time?

They're mostly reacting to the results of a Stanford study from last year, showing that they emit levels of NO2 that are hazardous to human health and emit methane (a very potent greenhouse gas) even when not in use.

Are you suggesting something nefarious? Topics blow up all the time for one reason or another; this is just another meme.

I'm not sure if this will do a lot to fight climate change, but if you use a gas stove I'd highly recommend buying a good air quality meter; you'd be surprised at how quickly cooking something on a gas stove destroys your indoor AQI.

Can confirm. I had a CO2 monitor in my house and cooking a quick meal for 1 person would raise the level to basically "not great working conditions" level if no windows were cracked.

That said, I believe gas stoves are by far the best for actually cooking.

Have you used an induction burner? The only real advantage a gas burner has, as far as I can tell, is being able to just directly roast peppers or whatever over the burner. But in every other way, induction feels like a large improvement, to me. It's way faster to heat up, it's way easier to clean, it's significantly cheaper, doesn't screw up my air quality... feels like a huge advancement.

Yea, I have, and I wasn't impressed. Maybe there's better ones.

Most induction "burners" I've used seem to modulate power by pulsing, i.e. being all-on for a time and then turning all-off, instead of a constant, low heat. I almost ruined a thin pan with this, because the instant-on all-power instantly overheated the very thin metal floor and everything in it was instantly burned to the metal. Probably not a problem with a thicker pan that has e.g. a steel or aluminum core. Still, I've yet to see a great induction stove.

Induction stoves also tend to scratch like hell, whereas gas stoves have that rustic iron on them that gets better looking the more use it sees.

Did you have (and use) an externally vented range hood?

Sadly, a lot of places don't require one. My apartment has a gas stove and a non-externally vented hood.

It was one of those built-in kitchen vent hoods, I don't know if it was externally vented or just blowing stuff around though.

Thankfully, literally 100% of the most critical problems facing our society have been completely resolved. We can now move onto the use of natural gas for cooking.

I’m certain we have enough attention to spend on more than one problem at a time.

"We have successfully avoided addressing all the big problems, but will happily use them as an excuse to avoid addressing smaller ones too."

We need a better and cleaner power grid. Otherwise, we're replacing our natural gas appliances with high-wattage electric ones, whose power comes from a coal-fired power plant.

There is no coal fired generation in NY state [1]. Coal is rapidly being retired out of the US generator fleet [2]. Still better to burn natural gas in a combined cycle gas turbine and ship the electrons than ship the gas to homes through a vast, hard to monitor maintain gas pipeline network [3] [4].

[1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-NY-NYIS

[2] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=54559

> Due to continued competition from natural gas and renewable resources, 23% of the 200,568 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired capacity currently operating in the United States has reported plans to retire by the end of 2029, according to our Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory. Between 2012 and 2021, an average of 9,450 MW of U.S. coal-fired capacity was retired each year. In 2022, U.S. coal retirements will total 11,778 MW if the remaining retirements reported to us proceed as scheduled.

[3] https://archive.ph/2022.06.23-093026/https://www.reuters.com... (“New research reveals U.S. gas pipeline leaks have not improved”)

[4] https://pirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/NHP-NHE-FG-Metha...

> On average, a major new gas leak incident is reported to the federal government every 40 hours, while more minor leaks can go undetected and unrepaired for years. The report, which shows that the incidence of major pipeline leaks or explosions has not decreased over the last decade, makes the case that the U.S. should move away from the widespread use of natural gas in homes and businesses toward electrification.

Here is a site showing the source of electrical generation for each state:

https://nei.org/resources/statistics/state-electricity-gener...

...if you live in Wyoming, yes, your electricity is coming from coal (73%). If you are in Washington state, no so much (2.9%).

The interesting part of that link is that NY generates 45.6% of it's power through natural gas.

That's the plan, on paper at least. By 2030 they want Upstate to be almost entirely Hydro and Nuclear. Downstate will follow by 2040.

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