Comment by slashdev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by slashdev | Hacker News Reader

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Banning gas for heating has a reasonable climate change argument. In Vancouver heating systems in new buildings will have to be zero emission soon. That makes some sense at least. Banning it for cooking seems to be another case of focusing on things that don’t move the needle. Meanwhile coal power plants continue to operate. There are less than 2500 major coal power plants worldwide. Why don’t we band together, mass produce 2500 nuclear plants that are at least as large, and make an actual difference. Yeah there’s lots of details there about fuel, construction and engineering, proliferation, etc. But that is all solvable with current technology. No leap of faith required, just the will, the money, and execution.

Yet nobody seems to talk about real solutions and we’re content to focus on stupidly useless things instead. I find it frustrating. Are we really in a crises? If yes, then fucking act like it and let’s see some ambitious solutions.

In the movies and books you see something threaten the survival of the human race and the whole world comes together and engineers something impossibly amazing to save the world. I think in reality we’d argue about plastic straws, or who pays for it, or gas stoves until the apocalypse kills the species too dumb to save itself.

> Why don’t we band together, mass produce 2500 nuclear plants that are at least as large, and make an actual difference.

Because the same climate activists who keep harping on the "climate crisis" and successfully push policies like in OP, are also irrationally opposed to nuclear energy.

Since these folks are calling the shots, we're heading into an energy crisis in which:

1. More and more demand is placed on our power grid due to moves like banning natural gas for heating.

2. This same power grid is rendered less and less capable and reliable due to being increasingly based on unreliable energy sources like wind and solar.

I grabbed some stats off google: solar nuclear and battery costs

Companies that are planning new nuclear units are currently indicating that the total costs (including escalation and financing costs) will be in the range of $5,500/kW to $8,100/kW or between $6 billion and $9 billion for each 1,100 MW plant.

Installing a solar farms will cost about $0.80 to $1.36 per watt. Solar farm costs can be estimated by energy output (megawatts) or size (acres). One megawatt is the power equal to 1 million watts, and one megawatt will power about 164 homes. ~$800-$1360/kw

Battery: $152/kWh Now, BNEF expects the volume-weighted average battery pack price to rise to $152/kWh in 2023

Nuclear would get some serious economies of scale at 2500 units, so those prices aren't a fair comparison of what could be.

I've long maintained here on HN, however, that under-investment in nuclear has made it not cost effective compared to renewables + storage (remember you don't need 100% storage.) At current market prices, nuclear doesn't make much sense. It could have really helped if we'd started earlier with it though, before renewables were in the picture.

54% of Vancouver's CO2 emissions come from natural gas home heating so yep, banning it makes tons of sense.

I couldn't find the source but I think there actually might be a carve out to continue to allow for natural gas for cooking, but in practice, no one but the foolish super rich (or perhaps some professional commissary kitchens) is going to go to the bother of doing a nat gas hookup for for a stove, so gas stoves are going to become deprecated as a side effect of the more impactful change around home heating.

Even in commercial cooking, gas is on the way out. I help run a catering business and at least in our kitchens, induction is far preferred to gas. It’s not ideal for wok cooking as understand it (without a specialist stove), but for everything else the speed and control of induction is unmatched.

I agree that banning gas for cooking is not important to control climate change. But for new buildings that do not require gas for heating, does it make sense to construct and maintain gas infrastructure just for cooking?

No it doesn't. At least it doesn't make financial sense.

I believe that Vancouver banned gas for home heating but left the door open to allow gas for cooking, but when I read articles about this at the time of the change, contractors quoted said it would be really silly to go to all the effort to create a gas hookup just for cooking. Likely would be very little uptake, and only by super wealthy enthusiast cooks who demand gas for some reason.

No, I think it probably doesn’t make sense. Also people can use the little tanks, like for your BBQ if they really want that. If the building rules allow it anyway.

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