The point here is that this policy is insanely counter productive. Then again the whole climate change hysteria is a scam. It is designed to hand over American capital to foreigners who then kick back a tiny piece to the corrupt politicians who legislate this scam.
IIRC the GE 9HA.02 has a nameplate capacity of 825 MW with a net 64% efficiency. But that is at the busbar. There are obviously downstream and end use conversion losses.
You obviously weren’t an engineer.
Based on the higher heating value of natural gas a well designed gas turbine combined cycle plant is well above 45% not 20% and new plants are nearing 70% no method of making electric power is more efficient not even hydrogen fuel cells.
https://www.powermag.com/another-world-record-for-combined-cycle-efficiency/
Even considering generation one NGCC plants the over all average is above 43%
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32572
I have a dual system dual zone geothermal heat pump with a coefficient of performance at 55 degrees ground source temp in heating mode of 6 that means for every kilowatt hour of electricity the system consumes it outputs 6 kilowatts of heat. The numbers work like this
Natural gas combined cycle avg efficiency to the busbar of 45% using 7340 btu / kwh higher heating value heat rate. 3% transmission losses over the HVAC network the 100km to my property including step up and step down 3 phase to single phase transformers. That one kWh at my meter needed 7340 btu + 3% more (220btu)= 7560 btu of raw natural gas. My heat pumps take that delivered one kwh and turn it via a first law reverse carnot process into 6 kWh worth of heat moving against the thermal gradient of 56 degrees to 90 degrees at the outlet air vents. 1 kwh is 3414 btu so 6 times 3414 is 20484 btu delivered to my living space from the original 7560 btu burned at the power plant. Oblivious 20484 is drastically more than 7500. Burning the same 7560 btus worth of natural gas at my location in the most modern gas furnace would only yield a 90% transfer to my living space or 6804 btus.
The math is clear
20484 is much greater than 6804 that’s verifiable physics. My system is even more efficient since all my power comes from the sun via the 15kilowatts of panels I have on my roof there is effectively no transmission losses over the 50 feet from the inverters to the heatpump units.
The only way direct firing of natural gas beats electric heating is when you compare on site combustion to electric resistance heating elements and that ancient technology is being phased out for a host of reasons. In temperate climates homes may not have cooling units but in humid hoy climates nearly every home will and that very same compressor that produces cooling produces heat on the other end of the cycle after the compressor nearly every new unit now has the 4 way valves which is all it takes to flip the condenser and evaporator locations to go from cooling to heating. Air source heat pumps of this ddesign gave COPs of 2 to 5 given the same parameters as the ground source an air source heat pump still beats direct fired gas heat.
COP 3 is 10242 btu for air source vs again 90% direct fired at 6804 using the same starting amounts of natural gas on a btu for btu basis. Since the cooling unit would be there anyways in hot climates it.makes all the sense to add in heat pump 4 way vales to the compressor evaporator chain. And nearly every manufacturer does exactly that now. Only in the far north with zero cooling yearly loads vs pure electrical resistance heating does direct fired gas make sense from a energy burned point of view. CO2 heat pumps can and do work in the far north they can extract heat from air temps down to 40 below zero while still.maintaining a COP above 2 at moderate temps of 40_50f that COP rises into the 4s