[rad-green] Cities are banning natural gas in homes to save the planet

*https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/11/10/climate-change-solutions-more-cities-banning-natural-gas-homes/4008346002/
<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/11/10/climate-change-solutions-more-cities-banning-natural-gas-homes/4008346002/>*

*USA TODAY          Nov 10, 2019*
No more fire in the kitchen: Cities are banning natural gas in homes to
save the planet
*By Elizabeth Weise*
[image: image.png]

SAN FRANCISCO – Fix global warming or cook dinner on a gas stove?

That’s the choice for people in 13 cities and one county in California that
have enacted new zoning codes encouraging or requiring all-electric new
construction
<https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2019/09/forward-looking-cities-lead-way-gas-free-future>
.

The codes, most of them passed since June, are meant to keep builders from
running natural gas lines to new homes and apartments, with an eye
toward creating fewer legacy gas hookups as the nation shifts to
carbon-neutral energy sources.

For proponents, it's a change that must be made to fight climate change.
For natural gas companies, it's a threat to their existence. And for some
cooks who love to prepare food with flame, it's an unthinkable loss.

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
<https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=77&t=11>. Carbon dioxide is the
primary greenhouse gas causing climate change
<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/04/21/earth-day-2019-climate-change-humans-global-warming-weather-rising-water/3507125002/>
.

“There’s no pathway to stabilizing the climate without phasing gas out of
our homes and buildings. This is a must-do for the climate and a livable
planet,” said Rachel Golden of the Sierra Club’s building electrification
campaign.

These new building codes come as local governments work to speed the
transition from natural gas and other fossil fuels and toward the use of
electricity from renewables, said Robert Jackson, a professor of energy and
the environment at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

“Every house, every high-rise that’s built with gas, may be in place for
decades. We’re establishing infrastructure that may be in place for 50
years,” he said.

These "reach" or "stretch" building codes, as they are known, have so far
all been passed in California. The first was in Berkeley in July, then more
in Northern California and recently Santa Monica in Southern California.
Other cities in Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington state are
contemplating them, according to the Sierra Club.

Some of the cities ban natural gas hookups to new construction. Others
offer builders incentives if they go all-electric, much the same as they
might get to take up more space on a lot if a house is extra
energy-efficient. In April, Sunnyvale, a town in Silicon Valley, changed
its building code to offer a density bonus to all-electric developments
<http://www.buildingdecarb.org/uploads/3/0/7/3/30734489/sunnyvales_revised_proposed_green_building_program_5-7-19.pdf>
.
No more gas stoves?

The building codes apply only to new construction beginning in 2020, so
they aren’t an issue for anyone in an already-built home.

Probably the biggest stumbling block for most pondering an all-electric
home is the prospect of not having a gas stove.

“It’s the only thing that people ever ask about,” said Bruce Nilles, who
directs the building electrification program of the Rocky Mountain
Institute, a Colorado-based think tank that focuses on energy and resource
efficiency.

Roughly 35% of U.S. households have a gas stove, while 55%have electric,
according to a 2017 kitchen audit by the NPD Group, a global information
company based in Port Washington, New York.

For at least a quarter of Americans, it doesn't matter either way. They
already live in houses that are all-electric, and their numbers are rising,
according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s especially
true in the Southeast, where close to 45% of homes are all-electric
<https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39293>.

For the rest of the nation, natural gas is used to heat buildings and
water, dry clothes and cook food, according to the EIA. That represents 17%
of national natural gas usage.

But the number of natural gas customers is also rising. The American Gas
Association, which represents more than 200 local energy companies, says an
average of one new customer is added every minute.

“That’s exactly the wrong direction,” Nilles said.
States weigh climate change solutions

The nudge toward all-electric buildings is the type of shift Americans will
begin to experience more and more in coming years. Last year, California’s
governor signed an executive order directing state agencies to work
toward making the entire state economy carbon-neutral by 2045.

California is not alone. New York, Hawaii, Colorado and Maine have
economywide carbon-neutrality goals, and several more are debating them.
More than 140 <https://www.sierraclub.org/ready-for-100> U.S. cities
<https://www.sierraclub.org/ready-for-100> have committed to transitioning
to carbon-neutral energy.

The natural gas industry rejects the notion that it should not be part of
the nation’s energy future.

“The idea that denying access to natural gas in new homes is necessary to
meet emissions reduction goals is false. In fact, denying access to natural
gas could make meeting emissions goals harder and more expensive,” said
American Gas Association President and CEO Karen Harbert.

The association calls the new zoning codes for new construction burdensome
to consumers and to the economy. They also say it’s more expensive to run
an all-electric home. A study by AGA
<https://www.aga.org/globalassets/research--insights/reports/aga_study_on_residential_electrification.pdf>
released
last year suggested that all-electric homes would pay $750 to $910 a year
more for energy-related costs, as well as amortized appliance and upgrade
costs.

But critics question AGA's conclusions.

Amanda Myers, a policy analyst at Energy Innovation, a research nonprofit
group focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, said AGA presumed high
electricity rates because of unrealistically large increases in expected
electricity use and made unusual assumptions for how any anticipated
electric load growth might be met.

An analysis last year by the Rocky Mountain Institute
<https://rmi.org/insight/the-economics-of-electrifying-buildings/>found
that in locations as diverse as Chicago, Houston and Providence, Rhode
Island, all-electric new homes over a 15-year time frame could save
residents as much as $260 a year compared with new homes with air
conditioners powered by electricity and natural gas.
You’ll pry my cold, dead hands off my gas range

The selling point for getting away from natural gas may come from a type of
electric range that, according to chefs, is just as good if not better than
gas. As fundamentally attached as people might be to cooking with
fire, induction
stoves <https://www.reviewed.com/ovens/series/induction-cooking-101> are
making headway.

Long popular in Europe and increasingly trendy in the United States,
induction cooktops are different from the kind of traditional electric
range where coils become red-hot. Induction ranges use electromagnetic
energy to directly heat pots and pans.

They are fast, energy-efficient and safe because there’s no open flame, and
they are cool to the touch unless you’re a piece of metal.

As Reviewed.com
<https://www.reviewed.com/ovens/features/induction-101-better-cooking-through-science>puts
it, they're "gentle enough to melt butter and chocolate, but powerful
enough to bring 48 ounces of water to a boil in under three minutes."

The downsides are that induction cooktops are more expensive than
traditional electric stoves, generally a third to half more. They also work
only with pans with steel or iron bottoms.

Professional chefs say modern induction ranges are comparable to gas. The
Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, America’s preeminent
cooking school, trains its chefs on both induction and gas stoves because
they will encounter both types and must know how to use them.

“Some of the finest restaurants in Europe are often out in mountainous
areas or places where there isn’t gas. They cook on induction and that
works just fine,” said Mark Erickson, a certified master chef at the
institute.

Regular electric stoves aren't a deal-breaker either, said Erickson,
who lives in a townhouse with one and cooks on it every night.

“If I were given the chance and if it were a choice of gas or electric, I
would choose gas because it’s what I’m used to,” he said. “But in all
honesty, it’s not the end of the world.”

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