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Comment by romwell | Hacker News Reader

IMO a blanket ban like that is stupid.

The amount of gas used for cooking is miniscule, accounting for under 3% of consumption[1].

Cooking with fire is different than cooking on an electric or induction stovetop. Banning the use of gas for heating would have been more than enough.

That's before we even get to the amazing fact that 40% of our electricity comes from burning natural gas [2], and that that natural gas powerplant efficiency is about 40%[3].

Which means that with the existing electricity infrastructure, switching from gas to electricity for heating results in more gas being burned.

Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

[1] https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/is-your-cookin...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...

[3] http://needtoknow.nas.edu/energy/energy-sources/fossil-fuels...

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I assume the goal here is to eliminate the expensive and leaky natural gas delivery network entirely: nobody is going to build something that complicated just so a few foodies can make stir fry (and people who really care can purchase it in bottled form.) So any world where the LNG delivery network exists is going to be one where it’s used for heating. Getting to CO2 net zero involves moving those applications entirely to non-fossil electricity.

> I assume the goal here is to eliminate the expensive and leaky natural gas delivery network entirely: nobody is going to build something that complicated just so a few foodies can make stir fry (and people who really care can purchase it in bottled form.)

There are inductive surfaces explicitly designed for woks, with a very deep, concave "bowl" to accommodate the wok.

I know two families (both Thai) that have bought them with zero regret and no complaints. Not cheap and certainly niche, but they do work as expected.

UPDATE: There are also adapter rings designed to work with woks. These aren't "half-assed, maybe they work" items. They are made for commercial kitchens, as in actual restaurants. Restaurants don't pay Gaggenau for hoping something works and doesn't disappoint customers -- they pay them because it does.

That's great to hear! It's still legal in restaurants so less rush, but good to know.

>Getting to CO2 net zero involves moving those applications entirely to non-fossil electricity.

The necessary and sufficient condition for that is the cost of electric heating to consumer being lower than the cost of gas heating in both short and long term (i.e., a 5-year subsidy isn't it).

This requires a significant reshaping of our electricity generation. Everything else is a band-aid on an axe wound.

A federal tax on burning natural gas can make that shift happen, but will hit the poor people.

Finally, again, you can't shift to non-fossil electricity because you don't get to choose which electricity you shift to. As is, you're just going to burn more gas in a different place. The benefits of this rearrangement aren't obvious to me.

It's more efficient to burn gas to make electricity (45% efficient), transport it over the grid (95%), and then run a heat pump (250 - 600% efficient) than it is to burn the gas for heat (80 - 95% efficient).

And renewable electricity is cheaper than gas electricity, if it is available.

I guess part of the reason is that, in the long run, you don't want to maintain the gas infrastructure for a whole city just to let people cook with gas.

All existing residential is excluded. Any new residential is mostly excluded for the next 6 years. Commercial, manufacturing, and laundromats are excluded.

The city will be maintaining the gas infrastructure for eternity. There will just be a subset of unfortunate residents that have to cook with electric while 99% of their neighbors continue with gas.

Appliances do not last forever. The internet is telling me that a typical gas stove lasts about 15 years, and a gas furnace in the 15-30 range.

I'd expect that at some point in the next decade they will extend the ban to cover replacement appliances so as existing gas stoves and furnaces die they will be replaced with electric.

The internet should also tell you that you can’t trivially replace gas with electric. You must run new electric lines to service the higher power requirements.

My fermi estimate is that every electrician in NYC would need to upgrade 1,750 apartments.

More current, more wires, more circuits... seems to me the smallest unit of replacement is a whole building that gets a good electrical rewiring. In NYC those will be large buildings.

In many cities in NL the plan is to completely replace gas with electric by 2050. New buildings will not have a connection to the gas network, existing ones will have to be retrofitted. In some test neighborhoods, this is already happening.

I can imagine it will be the same more or less everywhere at some point, including NYC. Sure, there might be a setback and the law might change, but given the plan to reduce emissions it seems kinda inevitable (again, in the long run).

Yep. Practically everyone in New York has gas, and it is so wonderful. When I left I had to get used to electric again, it's like an easy bake oven.

Please stop calling them “electric”. You are almost certainly meaning resistive. Induction is also electric and is superior to both resistive and gas.

I don't see landlords in New York forking out for induction ovens. Tenants will be lucky to get three working burners on a 1987 Daihatsu range.

An electric stovetop boils water faster than a gas stovetop

> That's before we even get to the amazing fact that 40% of our electricity comes from burning natural gas [2], and that that natural gas powerplant efficiency is about 40%

Like electric cars, a benefit would be that the energy source is generalized. I like thinking of it as a good separation of concerns. If nearly everything is electrified, then everyone benefits as better and more efficient energy sources become available over time.

It would also be easier to employ hypothetical future carbon capture systems at a small number of power plants compared to a large number of homes.

You have to factor in the energy efficiency of heat pumps, and if you do, burning gas to produce electricity to run a heat pump can be comparable in efficiency to burning gas directly.

This would really depend on the outdoor air temperature though, wouldn't it?

This has been covered pretty extensively in several comment chains, eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29687522. But basically, even down to below freezing it's still way above 100% efficient.

This is about heating more than cooking as heating is a way bigger energy use for most households, but you are seriously proposing it would a smart move to build out gas delivery infrastructure just so people can keep cooking with gas?

More importantly, please stop using the tired old excuse that we should wait to electrify until all electric generation is renewable. Converting domestic heating infrastructure to electric is a massive project that will probably take decades and represents billions of tons of CO2 emissions already baked in. We need to start now. Deciding to build new gas infrastructure today is committing to burn more gas for decades.

“…and that that natural gas powerplant efficiency is about 40%[3].“

The next line in your reference points out that combined cycle plats are >60% efficient which are pretty much all gas plants.

60% of the energy in gas is turned into electricity.

Efficiency of cooking with gas is less than 30% so I'm not sure your point about relative efficiencies is correct. But I agree with the overall point.

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