• Welcome to the new and improved Building Code Forum. We appreciate you being here and hope that you are getting the information that you need concerning all codes of the building trades. This is a free forum to the public due to the generosity of the Sawhorses, Corporate Supporters and Supporters who have upgraded their accounts. If you would like to have improved access to the forum please upgrade to Sawhorse by first logging in then clicking here: Upgrades

California cities banning the installation of natural gas

Why should we be burning natural gas, creating emissions, when everyone knows there is environmentally-free electricity that magically comes out of the wall outlets. You know ... the stuff that is used to charge electric cars so the cars don't have to burn that nasty gasoline.
 
From the article .... "Natural gas is a fossil fuel, mostly methane, and produces 33% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration."

So, a third of the US carbon dioxide emissions comes from natural gas electricity generation. So lets ban natural gas in the home, increase demand for electricity, which is generated by natural gas burning generation stations. Wait, doesn't that make it worse?
 
I read this article the other day and just shook my head, requiring the charging at multi family there won't be any strain on the existing electrical system will there not to mention when google says this may be a tad much
 
We need to address the carbon emitted with gas cooking. The question of how we get there is more complex.

From a regulatory perspective such local amendments are only allowed if approved by the California Energy Commission which is constrained by current law which requires that local amendments reduce the cost.

I believe the future of natural gas should be resolved at the state level and not by local ordinances. My reading of California law suggests that the current local ordinances are not legal. Changes to the law will likely be required but the emphasis should be on uniform requirements throughout the state.

Shifting the energy demand to electricity does no real good if the electrical energy is generated using fossil fuels. In the near future I believe the emphasis should be on eliminating fossil fuel power plants.

One option that may mitigate the effect of burning natural gas is the use of carbon capture technology which extracts carbon from the atmosphere. You could use carbon capture to offset the carbon from natural gas or to formulate a replacement for natural gas. This may be part of the answer for how to deal with all of the existing buildings using natural gas.

The idea that backup batteries make sense only in remote locations ignore realities of renewable power. We need to have a mechanism to store power so that it can be used when solar or wind is not available. Given that much power is generated locally it makes sense to have local storage. In the future your electric car battery will be hooked to the grid and will be used to level out the grid.

With the increase in the use of electricity the Grid will change and we will find that much of the management of the grid will occur in what a referred to a microgrids. This makes sense when much electricity is generated and stored locally.

Your backup generators will be replaced by locally generated solar and wind power with battery backup. Given our experiences with intentional power outages to prevent fires you should consider this strategy.
 
???? Issue with battery back up in cities is the cut over when they all come back on at once.
Separate panels and circuits will be required.
 
Battery backup, For the rolling black outs the utility does, so they do not get sued??
 
The grid will be wired and managed differently than currently. The batteries in electric cars that are plugged in will help manage surges. Because much of the balancing of generation and storage will be managed by local microgrids the surges will be easier to control.

Expect that for high current devices such as clothes dryers you will get a rate reduction if the grid can turn off the device when demand is high.

While the switch over will present challenges there are no technical reasons preventing the changes. The point is that we really have no option.
 
Nuclear power will be a non issue. When you consider cost of construction, operations, and disposal of nuclear material I expect other power sources will be cheaper. You do not see a lot of push for new nuclear power plants.

Nuclear power plants are not as safe as some would suggest. Check out Browns Ferry and how a candle nearly caused a meltdown.
 
The grid will be wired and managed differently than currently. The batteries in electric cars that are plugged in will help manage surges. Because much of the balancing of generation and storage will be managed by local microgrids the surges will be easier to control.

Expect that for high current devices such as clothes dryers you will get a rate reduction if the grid can turn off the device when demand is high.

While the switch over will present challenges there are no technical reasons preventing the changes. The point is that we really have no option.

When we had those recent fires I had to think that ti was a good thing that Elon Musk wasn't successful marketing his "Power Walls". if you recall he was going to recycle old Tesla car batteries as house back-up batteries called "Power Walls"., had he succeeded there would have been explosions all over the place as the Power Walls blew up. Ever see a Tesla car on fire? Blue white flames shoot from underneath them, in at least two cases the firemen put out the fires but they blew up hours later after the cars were towed into storage.

What do you mean we have no option? "Climate scientists" now say we have to reduce the population, if we reduce it enough there will be no problems.

Population
Still increasing by roughly 80 million people per year, or more than 200,000 per day (figure 1a–b), the world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced—within a framework that ensures social integrity. There are proven and effective policies that strengthen human rights while lowering fertility rates and lessening the impacts of population growth on GHG emissions and biodiversity loss. These policies make family-planning services available to all people, remove barriers to their access and achieve full gender equity, including primary and secondary education as a global norm for all, especially girls and young women (Bongaarts and O’Neill 2018.) ¹



¹ https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biz088/5610806
 
What do you mean we have no option? "Climate scientists" now say we have to reduce the population, if we reduce it enough there will be no problems.
Don't worry conarb if we go down the socialist path that many are advocating for those in power will eventually kill millions just like their socialist predecessors..

" Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il = 100 MILLION people killed by socialism."
 
Don't worry conarb if we go down the socialist path that many are advocating for those in power will eventually kill millions just like their socialist predecessors..

" Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il = 100 MILLION people killed by socialism."

How many were killed for Capitalisms? Oil, gold, lumber, just greed?
How many Native Americans were slaughtered for their land? Some say 10-million.
 
Don't worry conarb if we go down the socialist path that many are advocating for those in power will eventually kill millions just like their socialist predecessors..

" Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il = 100 MILLION people killed by socialism."

These where communist not socialist, you need to learn the difference. Anyone that thinks a goverment which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned by the community as a whole. For example post office, transportation systems (roads, airports, trains, harbors, etc.), medicare, social security, vet hospitals, goverment code departments (rather than private code companies), parks, Fannie Mea, subsides to private companies.

Some socialist countries do very well have lots of freedom like Sweden and England.

Every country has some socialism or they could't function. The fight was always about how much socialism should we have not if we should have any.
 
Top