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In Brooklyn, construction is underway for a 7-mile pipeline meant to reinforce the city’s natural gas system. Environmental activists have waged countless protests against the project run by National Grid—gaining political allies, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, who announced opposition in December.
Groups fighting the plan want to end all construction of fossil fuel infrastructure to reduce carbon and other emissions that lead to climate change and pollute the local air. Two-thirds of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings, the bulk of that originating from natural gas in residences. Natural gas makes up more than 60% of energy sources in multifamily buildings, according to a December 2020 report from the Urban Green Council. Among all large buildings, natural gas use has increased over the past decade, even as fuel oils have halved.
No matter how you look at it energy is needed to keep us warm or cool .
Where that energy comes from and how much it's going to cost us is the big question.
Me? No worries. I got my dogs to keep me warm in the winter and nice tall maple to keep me cool in the summer.
The main problem with this isn't solely the environmental aspect, though it makes sense that gothamist would focus on that. Instead, the problem is how economically myopic this is and what a bum deal this is going to be in terms of infrastructure expenditure and utility value.
For several years now in NYC, there has been the availability of heat pumps that operate efficiently and well on what would be considered cold days in NYC with a coefficient of performance around and above 3 even in zero degrees Fahrenheit. This means that even with generating and transmission losses for electricity generated by natural gas sources, the heat pump has a baseline that is at least as efficient as natural gas and meanwhile electricity is much, much more versatile in both its final consumer use as well as its possible generation sources especially given that there is an easy, tried and true pathway for natural gas to become electricity.
Unfortunately, we don't often think much about longitudinal planning, or even worse, we have some absolutely idiotic people who are so colored by their own biases that they'll have a gut reaction to "enviroidiots" or such that just complete bypasses any actual thought or interest in thinking things through even a little bit.
Gas pipelines under NYC streets need an external supply. Your wacko governor cancelled the Constitution Pipeline designed to bring Appalachian natural gas into New York State and the wacko New Jersey governor has pledged to stop the Penn East Pipeline.
Gas pipelines under NYC streets need an external supply. Your wacko governor cancelled the Constitution Pipeline designed to bring Appalachian natural gas into New York State and the wacko New Jersey governor has pledged to stop the Penn East Pipeline.
Right, which makes this run of the pipeline even more ridiculous.
It's just plain dumb to have this and a bad use of resources and dollars.
The first time there's a natgas shortage cause by a lack of pipeline capacity, and people are freezing in the winter, the long haul pipelines will get built.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
Right, which makes this run of the pipeline even more ridiculous.
It's just plain dumb to have this and a bad use of resources and dollars.
The first time there's a natgas shortage cause by a lack of pipeline capacity, and people are freezing in the winter, the long haul pipelines will get built.
Right, and that's part of why this money should be spent on electrical infrastructure upgrades, because the variety of sources you can use to generate electricity is far greater than what you have available for natural gas and is inclusive of natural gas as well and electricity has far greater uses than solely heating and cooking, and meanwhile, the *worst* case scenario for efficiency of electrical heating with modern heating is about as efficient as natural gas heating--the only part of New York state that would be inefficiently served by heat pumps are the Adirondacks and even that's not totally true if also using a ground source which is more possible in the Adirondacks because of the relatively unlikely scenario of striking any utilities in excavation. More natural gas infrastructure downstate isn't a great investment, but this is a state that elected Cuomo on one hand and then a reactionary crowd that unthinkingly refers to expansion of natural gas infrastructure downstate as being opposed by "enviroidiots" on the other as two sides of one dumb coin, so it's unfortunately about par for the course.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 04-17-2021 at 07:43 PM..
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