Bill to Require All-Electric Buildings in New York State Gets a Jump-Start (Ithaca: real estate)

[Aeran]

FYI

https://www.thecity.nyc/2021/11/1/22...-landmark-bill

The effort to electrify buildings is getting a new boost — this time, at the state level.

While a bill in the City Council that would effectively ban gas hook-ups for new construction is stalled in negotiations, state lawmakers are pushing a more sweeping measure that would require new buildings across the state to be all-electric by 2024. And by 2023, an all-electric building would not be able to convert to using fossil fuels.

The landmark bill, introduced in May by Sen. Brian Kavanagh (D-Manhattan, Brooklyn) and Assemblymember Emily Gallagher (D-Brooklyn), was amended in late October to accelerate timelines.

“We cannot allow any new fossil fuel infrastructure and still reduce emissions enough to avert climate catastrophe,” Gallagher said on Monday as President Joe Biden assured world leaders at the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow that the U.S. would meet its climate goals.

Kavanagh said he’s optimistic the state measure has the support needed to pass. If it does, New York would be the first state in the nation to mandate all-electric buildings. More than 50 municipalities in California have all-electric building codes, and other cities, including Seattle and Ithaca, are advancing electrification in new buildings.

New York real estate leaders say the bill expects too much, too soon. Technology isn’t quite ready for gas-free buildings, opponents say, noting that all-electric structures would largely rely on energy generated by fossil fuel-powered plants.

[GoldenHair]

Electric heating is expensive heating. Decades ago when I lived in an apartment in the western southern teir of New York, my winter gas heating bill was about $80 per month. Two years later I move to another apartment closer to work. That apartment was all electric. The winter electric heating bill was around $270 per month. There is good economical reason that most homeowners choose gas over electric to heat their homes.

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by GoldenHair

Electric heating is expensive heating. Decades ago when I lived in an apartment in the western southern teir of New York, my winter gas heating bill was about $80 per month. Two years later I move to another apartment closer to work. That apartment was all electric. The winter electric heating bill was around $270 per month. There is good economical reason that most homeowners choose gas over electric to heat their homes.

Right, it's a lot more expensive if you're using electric resistance heating which was what most electric heating has been in the past. The resistance heaters are themselves about as efficient as gas heaters and similar, but the electricity to supply it loses quite a bit in the generation and a little bit in the transmission. For example, if your utility uses a natural gas plant to generate electricity, even at a fairly good 60% efficiency of a combined cycle plant, then it doesn't matter that at the end the resistance heater does a nearly 100% conversion of that electricity to heat, because you had already lost out on 40% upstream. Compare that with natural gas heating with the pipes where you also get 100% efficiency, but you lose almost nothing in the conversion.


However, an increasing amount of electric heating is no longer resistance heaters, but with heat pumps and those are a lot more efficient because they don't just generate a modicum of heat but also move heat from one location (usually outdoors) to where you want it. These often have coefficient of performance (COP rating) that's above 100% and heat pumps can reach a COP of 3 or 4 compared to the almost 1 of an electric resistance heater or natural gas heating. Previously, these often performed pretty poorly once at or below freezing outdoors, but steady work on them especially in Japan and much of the rest of East Asia has made it so that they perform fairly well with COP still above 1 even in subzero temperatures. That much higher COP then makes it so that the heat pumps of the last several years are now effective and efficient even in most of New York State's winter temperatures save for the coldest parts of the coldest days in the Adirondacks.

[Interlude]

Maybe don't shutter the nuclear plants if you want to go all-electric.

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by Interlude

Maybe don't shutter the nuclear plants if you want to go all-electric.

There are still a few near Lake Ontario with 2 in Oswego and one in Ontario.

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by Interlude

Maybe don't shutter the nuclear plants if you want to go all-electric.

Or at least have another plan in place. The HVDC line from Quebec is good, but that should have been in place years ago before or during the Indian Point shutdown.

Indian Point shutting down is overall probably a good idea as while the probability of catastrophe was very low at least as far into its life cycle as we know it, that low probability carried with it extremely high repercussions because within its 5 mile radius was one of the primary water catchments for downstate and there were and are a lot of other options like the Quebec HVDC line.