Posted on 09/27/2022 5:25:49 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
In its efforts to minimize ozone pollution, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) voted to phase out gas furnaces and water heaters. Beginning in 2030, homes will be required to install zero-emissions alternatives, like electric heaters as the sale of fossil-fuelled appliances will be banned. The move is designed to meet EPA regulations limiting emissions in the atmosphere to 70 parts per billion, but much of the Golden State still exceeds that limit.
Speaking to NPR about the ban on gas furnaces, CARB Chair Liane Randolph said, "We need to take every action we can to deliver on our commitments to protect public health from the adverse impacts of air pollution. With the strategy, we can do just that." She added that while this strategy will clean the air for Californians, it will also lead to reduced emissions in the many low-income and disadvantaged communities that experience greater levels of persistent air pollution.
The vote was met with public comments which included some opposition. Retired Engineer Michael Kapolnek said reduced emissions don’t justify the cost to homeowners forced into expensive upgrades. But groups like the American Lung Association and the Sierra Club supported the ban on gas furnaces. Senior Policy Advocate at Sierra Club California, Daniel Barad said the move will reduce the building sector’s carbon footprint and improve public health.
According to a report from policy research group SPUR, fossil-fuelled appliances like gas furnaces in California homes and buildings generate four times as much lung-damaging nitrogen oxide as the state’s gas-powered plants. "To meet federal air quality standards that protect the health, air quality regulators must phase out the sale of gas appliances and implement equity-centered implementation plans for transitioning homes to electric alternatives," the report says.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Elon Musk is also powering his Starship on NG. If you don’t consider CO2 to be a pollutant (I know my plants don’t), it burns absolutely clean and is easily stored.
End game is what Chavez did in Venezuela. Make everyone dependent on electricity. Subsidize the poor who will vote for the dems and punish those that won’t. Wealthy neighborhoods in Caracas had brownouts and blackouts all the time while the poor neighborhoods never lost power.
In the end, certain areas will shut down to keep other areas going. A real haves vs have nots scenario.
those chinese windmills are sure going to make us energy independent! /s
I had a short list of requirements for my last home purchase.
Price
Safe area
Natural gas.
I pay extra to not have a smart meter.
A good start. I think it’s even more ambitious and worse. I also think they want to force us into mass transit and housing.
> Why don’t they go after China instead of destroying so much here? <
It’s for the same reason no one seems to care where and how Covid came about. China has a hold on us, and it’s got to be a follow-the-money thing.
Minnesota under our idiot Democrat Governor is putting the state in lockstep with California climate edicts. Minnesota is frequently hit with winter polar vortex events that plunge large parts of the state into 20-30 below zero temperatures. In a recent polar vortex event Xcel Energy was advising its natural gas customers to keep their thermostat at no higher than 58 degrees because natural gas suppliers could not meet the demand. Imagine depending on electricity to heat your home as well as power your car when the temperatures are 30 below zero and the lack of wind from polar vortex idles most of the windmills and the lowest temperatures are at night when solar farms are offline.
True that. PG&E commits another lie a lot of folks don't know about. California pushed a lot of folks to install home solar and supply the grid with their excess. Sounds good in theory. Until PG&E realized free American citizens were able to supply power better than the utility could, so PG&E got in the habit of every now and then changing the frequency on the grid slightly off the 60 Hz standard. This makes all of the inverters of solar users go into protection mode (to protect the homeowners' appliances from dirty power), which temporarily disconnects them from the grid, which makes them temporarily quit supplying excess solar power to the grid.
Thus, lying PG&E can show reports to their lying state regulators and say, "See? You need us more than ever, even with everybody having solar power. That's why we have to charge high rates even during peak hours when the sun is shining."
Even when you play their game and "do your part", they change the rules of the game so there's always a crisis that only they can solve.
I’m so old I remember the Dims telling us that natural gas was a clean alternative to coal. That’s why Alabama Power had to shut down a coal plant and replace it the capacity with more use from their natural gas plants.
That was waaaaayyy back ... in the Obama regime.
All my California relatives vote Democrat. None of them are immigrants. The fact is there are a lot of leftists there who have no grip on reality.
Think lemmings same result
And you appear to very very good at snarkiness. Congrats.
Oh I understand that due to originally from Ohio. Living in the south now and our electric rarely goes out. We are lucky in that.
just got my first house with a gas stove at 50, love it
My house in Idaho has gas heat (HVAC) and water heater. The kitchen stove/oven are electric. The kitchen isn't vented for gas. The clothes dryer is 220 VAC. The San Diego house had a gas clothes dryer. I have a natural gas pipe in the back patio that services my gas grill. A power failure would be resolved by cooking on the gas grill. We would still have hot water. I would need to put the HVAC blower on a UPS to ensure heating with the gas. Alternatively, the wood burning stove will heat the whole house.
When my 40,000 BTU gas water heater needed replacement, I investigated a flash heater (tankless). The vent was built for 40,000 BTU. The tankless gas flash heater has a 128,000 BTU burner. It needs more oxygen and venting than I have in the basement location. Upgrading those would cost $4,000. An electric flash heater would need more power than my current 200 amp panel has "spare", so no go that way either. I replaced with a 40,000 BTU optimized for my 4600 ft elevation.
You are correct. Why not demand that appliances be constructed to be safe? I thought we could handle this with market forces but the government agencies think they can still solve problems by edict. They are nuts, and I live in CA, but do not expect to make it to 2030— maybe that is why the date is so far away?
too much load also will pull down generation from 60 cycles to a lower number.
Yes, there are plenty of white liberals in California, but it doesn’t change the facts, and this applies to America in general, the core Americans still vote roughly the same, and the 1965 Immigration Act is what flipped America.
The Democrats have not won a majority of the white vote (nationally) since 1964, a sympathy vote for JFK.
In California, the Democrats and Republicans would still be fighting it out tooth and nail every election, and the California Dems would be far less hard left if it wasn’t for immigration.
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