Sierra Club, environmental groups petition EPA to ban natural gas for heating
denvergazette.com
denvergazette.com
Yes high efficiency heat pumps are getting better. But they aren't readily available. If they are, very few companies install/service them. No one has them in the Midwestern area I live in. They also only work down to say -20F and we do have quite a few days below that so you can't just make natural gas illegal.
Not to mention not everyone can afford it. Maybe let's focus on making them readily available and cheap instead of just banning things outright.
There also isn’t a low temperature heat pump solution that works for radiators. I’m actually really interested in heat pumps as my boiler is a few years away from end of life. But I really resent being forced to do something drastic and end up buying some shitty first generation product because some advocate in a California coastal climate says so.
If this comes to my state, I’ll hold my nose while doing it, but I’ll vote republican to stop it.
There are. Here's one [1] that works down to -26 Celsius (47 F below freezing!!) and connects to radiators. In practice it will also work below -26 C, since multi-zone pumps can use other rooms to balance out reliance on the external radiator.
It's also crazy efficient: at -13 C/5 F it still moves 12078.98 BTUs of heat per kWh of electricity consumed. At 10.42 cents/kWh that's nearly half the price of natural gas.
[1]: https://www.fujitsu-general.com/us/products/vrf/j4/aou60rlav...
As I understand it, for two-pipe (hydronic) radiators, and air-to-water heat pump can operate them. Chiltrix makes one for residential use. Other vendors seem to mostly offer this feature for commercial use.
For single pipe steam radiators, you need steam. I’ve never seen one of these systems that worked well, but if someone doesn’t want to replace it outright, any heat pump option will need very high output temperature.
The difficulty in replacing things like steam radiators is that installing ducts in an existing house is too expensive and difficult. Multi-zone heat pumps let you avoid that.
The split systems are a viable solution, but are aesthetically pretty awful. The point is that these types of retrofits are expensive and the tech is new. Now, we should be pushing lots of carrots to encourage installation. Take out the sticks later as the gas infrastructure starts to become obsolete.
To me the mandate is the problem. In my case, I’ll gladly buy as soon as it’s viable for me. But I have the means to think that way.
I would love to use a hyper efficient heat pump solution so I'm asking the questions here.
Put it on a stand.
https://www.arcticheatpumps.com/images/2021/03/31/standinact...
Put it just under your roofline, if you like. There's no reason you can't put these things six feet in the air.
You don't actually care, you're just moving goalposts.
We spend most of the winter night below 0F so these heat pump options don't look viable. Not to mention we have no where outside to put this thing it won't be covered in snow. Resistive heat is the only thing that seems viable and that's crazy expensive.
> We spend most of the winter night below 0F so these heat pump options don't look viable.
The heat pump does not stop working or turn off at -15 F. It reaches COP=1. It still warms your house, just not more efficiently than resistive heat.
Your house also stores warmth, and if insulated well it will not become cold during whatever period the temperature drops below -25 F.
Failing both of those, just keep whatever heating you have right now. That's all you have to do.
> Not to mention we have no where outside to put this thing it won't be covered in snow.
You do. Put it on a stand. Hang it on a wall if you like. Put it on the roof. It does not need to sit on the ground.
Can't you use a heat pump to warm water in a boiler, and then pump hot water through a baseboard radiator heating system?
Of course, most houses aren't set up for this. Just curious if it's a workable solution, or if I'm overlooking some problem.
> The Sierra Club opposes the licensing, construction and operation of new nuclear reactors utilizing the fission process, pending:
> The dangers posed by the probable releases of tritium used by fusion plants, the problems with decommissioning these plants, and their high costs lead the Sierra Club to believe that the development of fusion reactors to generate electricity should not be pursued at this time.
The Sierra Club has always had an anti-human feel to it, starting with John Muir and his despicable racism toward the indigenous people.
I see this from activists alot. They recommend some bananas policy prescription, and when the experts in that field say "that's not possible" the reply is always: "well you're the expert, just figure it out".
If you get a nasty February ice storm that cuts a power line, you can be without electric power in 0F weather for up to 5 days. I guess people can install natural gas generators for that occurrence, but that seems to be a little bit counterintuitive (also, would a gas company provide emergency-only service?). I am not sure if heat pumps can work off regular gas powered portable generators that people usually use for emergency power.
[1]: https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/mpsc/consu...
How do I know this? I work for a major utility serving the midwest. Winters are no joke in these parts. As others have noted, heat pumps are only good down to 20F. If it gets colder than that, which it frequently does, you're going to want a natural gas furnace because electric furnaces are stupid expensive to operate! This coming from a guy who works for the power company!
There's not going to be any phase-out of natural gas for decades - which is the amount of time we need to build all the nuclear generation we need to make power as cheap and abundant as we need. We can't heat our homes and power our cars with wishes and desires - we need a hard-nosed energy policy and plan of execution.
Others said no such thing. Did you leave out the minus sign?
What I recall my dad saying is when the furnace guy came out to fix the furnace my dad was talking to the furnace guy about the bill. The furnace guy said heat pumps get very inefficient below 20F. So my dad's system was designed to run the heat pump until the outside temperature got to 20F and then it would switch over to the furnace, if available. If it detected the furnace not coming on then it would continue to run the heat pump. So I've had it in my head ever since that you don't want to run a heat pump below 20F.
Are the new heat pumps different? Is it now -20F instead of 20F before your costs soar?
This guy gets really excited about heat pumps:
Why would they? They already have one. They don't have to rip it out just because they get a heat pump. Heat pumps don't go where the furnace is.
> I am not sure if heat pumps can work off regular gas powered portable generators that people usually use for emergency power.
Depends on the generator, although some heat pumps run on 120 V. More often they're like central air conditioners, washing machines, and stoves, and run on split-phase 240 [1]. 240 V generators are not as common as 120 V, but they are still very easy to find: https://www.homedepot.com/p/318061554
[1]: your house gets 2 "hot" (one positive voltage, one negative) wires and 1 neutral, with most things connected between neutral and a hot wire, with a ground to check for shorts. High power (anything over 1.4 kW) appliances get a NEMA connector between the two hot wires, and a ground to check for shorts.
They certainly can. Are you thinking heat pumps only come as mini-splits? Drop-in replacement of the furnace is likely the cheaper option when replacing an existing gas furnace over a multi-head system.
If you have a furnace it's trivial to have it left in place.
Air is not moved from outside to inside via PVC or other method. Refrigerant (freon in older systems, more obscure names now) moves from outside to inside via a small copper pipe.
> An air handler can be put in place of a furnace, but it certainly does not have to.
An air handler just moves air around, it doesn't replace a furnace. Its an essential part of a central heating / cooling system regardless of whether its attached to a heat pump, gas furnace or anything else.
I'm not sure why you keep doubling down on speaking authoritatively about something you don't understand. Why don't you read a basic intro and then you'll understand?
> They certainly can.
I am responding to what you said.
I live in Indiana and we've had power outages like this during both winter and summer. What sucks is that newer (last 25 years) gas furnaces have fancy-dancy blower motors (power vent) and if I lose electricity, I also can't run the furnace because the power vent won't work. My gas water heater was the same way. Last time it failed (they only last 10 years these days), I switched to electric because the power vent on the gas water heater was so noisy you could hear it throughout the entire house.
My house is somewhat livable in the summer heat with a power outage because I have a basement, but in winter, forget it.
Having said that, I'm not so keen on spending $10-15K to convert two gas furnaces to heat pumps.
By the nature of simply being an issue, you always have multiple power bases and advocacy groups staked out around a bureaucracy designed to do no more than it's forced to. If you have a better way to resolve issues than with this kind of postured negotiation, that would be wonderful, but it feels like it would also be pretty darn novel.
Sierra Club seems to be pandering to their donor base.
You’re right the legislature and ballot initiatives did not take extreme positions, but those were brought forth by political groups that took the position of legalizing cannabis for adults full-stop. They’ve made incremental progress by supporting broadly acceptable and reasonable legislation towards those goals, but they made concessions to win broad support.
I don’t see how the Sierra Club is different. That said, I would like to see our political debates and process lose the gamesmanship.
It seems like in the short-term it could make things tricky, but long term it feels like competition in the heat pump market should result in better products and lower prices... I am not so naive as to think that government interference in a market will inevitably cause a good result, but it seems like properly targeted regulation can help trigger a market shift that is ultimately beneficial to the environment and to consumers...
Even without these subsidies, heat pumps are more cost effective than natural gas in most cases. There is in fact almost no good reason to ban gas appliances at this point as they are going to decline rapidly without a ban.
The Sierra Club in general is made up of out of touch rich people. This is 100% them letting their privellege flag fly.
Edit: One thing I should've noted is that besides green house gas emissions there is a credible concern around the pollution produced by gas burning appliances. Several studies have shown a link between premature cardiovascular deaths and residential gas burning equipment. The issues are particularly pronounced among individuals with asthma. We should probably cease to use residential gas appliances in the near future but the way the market is going, a ban seems unnecessary and the imposition of such a ban would place serious burdens on the poor.
It doesn't help when critics exaggerate what's being suggested. They're an issue advocacy group pushing for regulatory changes that will of course involve a long, slow transition window when actually enacted by the legislature or EPA.
They're not asking for agents in jackboots to start seizing gas furnaces tomorrow. They're playing a necessary role in getting a slow-moving regulator to start moving forward on a plan that will take a decade to gradually roll out and that will incentivize further competition and innovation in alternative solutions over the course of five years or a decade or whatever.
You're referring to natural gas shortages? If you used the natural gas in europe to generate electricity instead of heat, it would go 3.6x farther with heat pumps. So your rhetoric really seems to ring hollow.
> They're not asking for agents in jackboots to start seizing gas furnaces tomorrow. They're playing a necessary role in getting a slow-moving regulator to start moving forward on a plan that will take a decade to gradually roll out and that will incentivize further competition and innovation in alternative solutions over the course of five years or a decade or whatever.
That's an unhelpful strawman, and it seems like the regulation would be a lot more aggressive than you describe, according to the article:
> The petition’s reading would force the EPA to set NOx standards that would effectively ban the use of natural gas in all new construction within a year after the regulation is implemented.
IMHO, current-day politics mean that any regulation like this will likely be rammed through quickly when one party has control, because a slow rollout will invite repeal by the other party.
> a plan that will ... incentivize further competition and innovation in alternative solutions over the course of five years or a decade or whatever.
Don't be fooled. If the past is any guide, the "innovation in alternative solutions" will still likely still be worse than what we have now (e.g. efficiency guidelines mean my dishwasher now either leaves my dishes either wet or dry-ish and soapy-tasting, because the dryer was crippled, forcing the use of a "rinse agent."
The biggest problem remaining is cost, $20k+ for a 24 SEER heat pump is just bonkers.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/use-of-natur...
Restricting or eliminating home usage of natural gas seems identical in its relative ineffectiveness as restricting home water use while ignoring large agricultural users.
So then the question is, if we're eliminating all gas usage, why do A before B rather than B before A and the answer to that is very simple. Electricity is fungible, and it's much harder to change all the millions of individual home and small business installations, so you should begin with that first or you'll never get done.
A subset of users who use a ton in % terms, and can be targeted cleanly and clearly to change use, translates into a large % decrease with the minimal amount of work.
You are suggesting a waterfall-style approach. Toil for years because it’s harder?
Gas generators OTOH have a 50 year lifespan. They'll have to be ripped out prematurely.
So they dont need ripped out, just better fuels.
But yes, there are lots of good hydrogen valves out there. Old natgas valves aren't good hydrogen valves.
Heat pumps are incredibly efficient. So much so that burning natural gas to generate electricity to power a heat pump is more efficient than burning the gas directly to create heat.
So even if we were to discount renewables entirely and change all natural gas furnaces to heat pumped powered by natural gas on the grid, we'd still come out ahead.
At a time when we _badly_ need to build more housing that people can actually afford, artificially raising the cost of building new homes also seems problematic. The rhetoric used by the republican lawmakers opposed to it does sound like the usual anti-regulation talking points, but I have to agree with them in this case. This would make life a lot harder and more expensive for a lot of people and I don't think "a few environmental groups" is enough consensus for the entire country.
Besides, if you're concerned about affordable housing, wouldn't (in the US at least) the first priority be to kill single-family zoning?
With that said...
I went to the Pickathon music festival last month (near Portland). The festival requires that all food from vendors be served in a reusable wide/shallow plastic bowl. Put the dirty bowl in a bin, and get a token for the next food purchase. Same idea with a tin cup, but attendees hold onto the cup (it comes with a carabiner). No single-use plastic allowed. Friends and I found the system easy and pleasant. A festival founder said in an interview that he hasn't heard complaints. He said other festivals have tried making this an option, but it didn't get traction.
The point is... sometimes it's easier for people to adjust to a new hard requirement, vs. swimming up-stream in a society that's very slow to adapt (because we're overwhelmed and status quo is known and relatively safe).
I’m all in favor of what the festival did though. I hate how much trash large gatherings can produce.
The warm fuzzy feeling you get inside from knowing you're saving the planet should keep you warm enough. /s
Keep the propane. Use it 5 days every year. You still have 95% of the reduction in CO2 and pollution that a heat pump brings, and reliable heat. Nobody is saying you have to be totally reliant on the heat pump. They don't even work the same way.
This is like refusing to get an air conditioner because you'll have to get rid of your heater. KEEP BOTH! You aren't even really replacing your heating, you're replacing your air conditioner, because a heat pump is an air conditioner. It just also happens to be incredibly good at keeping your home warm as well as cool.
Reliable electricity is hard, and we’ll need it more and more as we travel down our increasingly electric future.
Some people do use wood for heating (in a wood-burning stove for example) but those are rare exceptions that either make sense contextually (a cabin far from infrastructure) or as a sort of aesthetic experience, like playing your favorite album on vinyl instead of Spotify.
But we all know why we should not heat, say, every house in Chicago primarily by cutting and burning trees.
I think folks in the future will feel the same way about pulling a bunch of gas out of the ground and individually burning that in our basements, closets, or kitchens. Furnaces are, let’s face it, very old school, dirty and poorly optimized technologies. I can literally see the blue flames through gaps in the metal when my furnace is on, and it’s a nice new high-efficiency model that is less than a decade old. I have carbon monoxide alarms in my bedrooms. Great.
Sure, this petition is a blunt instrument that would cause havoc if implemented as written. But the thing about transitions is that you have to start somewhere or it will never happen. Can we agree that phasing out gas makes sense? Even if this specific petition is flawed.
There are national emissions standards for residential wood burning appliances, and in some cases state as well. In addition many localities have restrictions on wood burning and can issue temporary blanket bans based on air quality measurements.
The development of this regulation went hand-in-hand with a broader cultural awareness of the importance of air quality (indoor and outdoor)—and a desire to not cut down all the nice forests around the country. So wood has suffered from a source restriction as well.
It is pretty insane how debating a hot topic is now impossible. They are not even able to consider that an opposing political force might have different priorities or might simply be misguided. They just want to steal heating from americans because they are evil.
Assuming a heat pump lasts about 10 years, Has there been any analysis of the supply chain dependencies or repairability of heat pumps? I've asked this elsewhere and have had trouble figuring this out.
Saying this as someone currently fixing an old house, made haphazard 'kotatsu' heating setups, seen plenty of videos and articles evangelizing heat pumps, yet feel like there's little asked about the long term resilience or repairability of a given tech despite the greater efficiency.
Residential heat pumps are estimated to last 20-25 years; with typical services being capacitor changes, electromechanical contactors, and coil cleaning.
Digital thermostats from 15 years ago prevent the most common compressor issues. Smart thermostats can now detect symptoms proactively.
In the last 15 years, we've seen technological advances in compressor, gas, and electronics (as well as air to ground and air to water). And better calculations for sizing and air quality.
"Make" everyone live in an apartment, because they shouldn't have the choice. "Make" everyone give up their personal transportation (mobility). "Make" everyone switch to solar or geothermal.
Substitute "make" with "force" and you'll have the correct understanding of what kind of government mechanisms we'd be empowering to achieve these ends. Removing choice is the wrong instinct.
Working to price external costs in, so they get factored in to choices, can sway the choices, but you're not forcing people, or making a way for one group of people to force some other group of people to certain actions.
How about we move healthtech CTOs into dungeons deep underground, where no climate control is neccessary; and provide them a single terminal to continue working and a diet of 2000 kcal/day of the cheapest, most climate friendly vegan food? No spices -- too many food miles.
[The parent poster describes themselves as a "Healthtech CTO, entrepreneur, writing code since 1991, living in Berlin, Germany" (https://web.archive.org/web/20220906213159/https://news.ycom...)]
I figured I'd get a response like that.
> Why are you so triggered by that?
I'm not triggered. You were suggesting to coercively force major lifestyle choices (that just happen to be yours) onto other people (which "how about moving the the working/middle class..." clearly communicates). If you think that's fine, then you should give your empathy some exercise, and think about being treated similarly yourself.
You're shifting the goalposts: that's not what you said in your original comment. If that's what you meant, you communicated it very poorly.
> Yes, you cannot put a fancy big grill on a balcony to keep up with Joneses, sorry.
What's that even supposed to mean? I kind of get the feeling you're reacting to caricatures without understanding that they're distorted.
There's such a thing as "quality of life", and no one put you in charge of making those decisions for other people.
Not everyone enjoys living in a human zoo, dude. Really.
There are people who actually enjoy (e.g.) having a yard for the kids to play in that's not full of dog (or human) feces and used hypodermic needles.
I hope we can make the transition as fair as possible but with the limited time we have left, we have to push on all fronts at the same time.
There is a limit (for better or worse) to the throughput of political actions (at least in a representative government). Care must be taken when deciding which priority to pursue.
Why not all flights? It shouldn't be so cheap to fly for pleasure OR business given the climate externalities caused by _every_ flight.
International regulation requires global coordination. And there's always going to be some country that uses non-compliance as a way to make money. This makes A and B very difficult and expensive to tackle.
And C will never happen because big-agra is incredibly powerful.
By contrast, the EPA is a single entity that's powerful enough to enact and enforce changes across the entire USA.
I feel like people don't realize just how effective EPA initiatives are in this space. Energy Star regulations have drastically increased the efficiency of appliances all across the world. And have done so in only 30 years.
Isn't that already the case in California? edit: answer, yes basically, city and state rules are moving in that direction
https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2021/07/californias-citi...
You can avoid a lot of wasted time and energy by designing for gas free homes from the start.
They're also cheaper to build and to heat.
This petition is correct that we need to help low income people to insulate and heat their homes with electricity.
But it feels like the EPA stuff may just be lining up a federal ban hammer for states that don't implement sensible rules in the meantime.
On the merits, requiring replacement with a different type of unit is foolish policy and not the right starting point. As it stands now, new houses are still being built with natural gas. Eliminating that would be a bigger win, and twenty years from now you can work on phasing out what already exists.
So, you should have said the EPA "could not do this, but now they can."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/climate/epa-supreme-court...
As an aside, that is going to have some weird unforeseen effects at low levels because it means that almost every car and every dwelling or heated structure emits "pollutants" and there's god knows how many other laws that they therefore become subject to.
If you are objecting to food produced directly from fossil fuels, or methane emissions in agriculture, then yes those are valid targets to be addressed.
"The resilience of Earth’s atmosphere has been proven throughout our planet’s climate history" https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-...
But it is.
Also doesn't account for costs related to panel upgrades that often needs to happen in older homes to handle all these new electric appliances.
Similar with hot water heater, brand new, so I don't feel like it's reasonable to go buy a new hybrid.
Honestly if I could go back 10 years when I replaced my oil furnace with gas, I'd definitely attempt to install a ground source heat pump instead. With the gas change it "paid for itself" in about 5 years, and I'd still be waiting for the ground source system, but I'd be frankly more future proof.
I can generate my own electricity with solar. I can't make my own natural gas.
Then there is the issue that anaerobic septics a illegal in most areas since they stink when vented to atmosphere.
1. Gas is bad
2. Heat pumps are a viable alternative (maybe in most cases?)
3. The supply of heat pumps is low because they aren't popular (yet).
This is a standard problem with two standard solutions:
1. Ban the bad thing, forcing the market to shift to the alternative, causing a lot of short term pain as the supply chain for the new thing ramps up
2. Subsidize the new thing with government money so that it's cheaper than the old thing and people naturally shift to it as they build new or upgrade.
Option 1 makes it happen faster while sacrificing some people (usually poor and marginalized groups) while option 2 is more friendly to society at the cost of slower adoption.
Seems like the environmental groups are coming from the point of view of sacrificing some to make things move faster. They would probably make the argument that those people will be sacrificed anyway during rapid climate change.
So the real debate here is, will climate change slow down enough to make a difference based on the speed of adoption of residential heat pumps?
I don't think it will. In which case option 2 is the better one -- subsidize heat pumps, don't ban gas.
Nearly 4.5b in rebates for things like heat pumps, electric stoves, upgraded electrical and insulation. [1] I imagine we'll be seeing a lot more mailers ad sales folks next year crawling middle and lower income neighborhoods selling packages that take full advantages of these credits.
No clue how supply chains are going to handle the increased material demands these electric appliances need, but it'll be interesting to watch.
1 - https://www.rewiringamerica.org/policy/inflation-reduction-a...
- electricity sources for heating
- percentage of emissions coming from home heating via natural gas vs coal-originating electric heaters
- efficiency of progress over the years, expected trajectory
- predictions for how this will all actually play out, without hyperbole
Weird question. You're looking for "carbon intensity", the CO2 emitted per kWh: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1133295/electric-sector-...
> percentage of emissions coming from home heating via natural gas vs coal-originating electric heaters
Surely you mean relative emissions, not percent. Natural gas creates 53 kg of CO2 per mmBTU. A good heat pump (for instance: https://www.fujitsu-general.com/us/products/vrf/j4/aou60rlav...) has a COP of 3.6+, meaning 3.6 kWh of heat per kWh of electricity. Alternately, 81.4+ kWh per mmBTU.
Any state with a carbon intensity below 1,435 lbs CO2 per MWh will emit less CO2 using a heat pump rather than natural gas. Six states have higher carbon intensities: Utah, Indiana, Missouri, Wyoming, Kentucky and West Virginia.
In the state with the lowest carbon intensity, Washington, 1 mmBTU of natural gas will emit 7.21x as much CO2 as 1 mmBTU from a heat pump.
> efficiency of progress over the years, expected trajectory
Heat pumps are already half the price of gas heating, per BTU. The carbon intensity in those 6 states will rapidly decrease as natural gas outcompetes coal. In 5 years it's likely every state will have <1435 carbon intensity.
Cancel Membership here: https://donotpay.com/learn/cancel-sierra-club/#:~:text=To%20....
> To cancel with Sierra Club directly, send them an email with your request at member.care@sierraclub.org. It is recommended to include as much information as possible, such as your membership ID, account information, and anything else considered relevant.
These are environmental organizations, of course they sent a letter. That's what they do. They'll also probably get a letter from all the heat pump manufacturers saying they're cool with it, and other letters from people selling natural gas and gas furnaces. I'm sure they'd like you to stop cutting down trees and that ain't going to happen either.
You can get COP > 100% with a gas-fired heat pump, which are used commercially and in some larger (> 4000 sq. ft.) homes.
If your point is just "natural gas is currently used for electricity generation", then that's no argument against using heat pumps. I'll add that you get more heating from using NG combined cycle + a modern home heat pump than you'd get just burning the NG in a home furnace.
Gas-fired heat pumps might still be more efficient (or might not), as one is also effectively capturing and using the waste heat from the generation of work from the gas.
In fact it won't even operate below 0F, so it's just not going to work regardless of the COP above that. As nightly temps are below 0F all the time.
So i'll get good savings on my bill when it's daylight and freeze to death at night. Great.
Why are you talking about 0 F now instead of -30 F? Modern heat pumps can work just fine at 0 F. If you find one that doesn't, then don't buy it, get a better one.
Regardless. Night time temps fluctuate at the bottom of the COP range and then might even need resistive when the heating demand is the absolute greatest. Plus you would need to build an outdoor shelter for the outside unit to handle snow. Then you have to hope the power grid holds up to all these people on resistive power. You can't just look at the happy path of.. well on average it works out great. The system seems to get quite complicated in extreme environments.
What a low effort comment. This thread is just riddled with them from people who seem too angry to form a rational thought.
Those days are long gone.
That seems incredibly high. Canada is less than half of that. In a country with a far more spread out population and colder winters.
Canada has lots and lots of hydro (59.3% of Canada's electricity generation), and the low population density means it will cover much of your demand.
You are the carbon they want to eliminate.
People are going to use the cheapest option to heat their home. If you truly want people to switch from natural gas then make a cheaper option. Forcing change is rarely the best course. Make something cheaper or easier and people will change on their own. You don't see many horse and buggies or gas lights around much anymore. They were supplanted by better options not forced.
In the southeast, my furnace is used 3 months a year, my highest bill is $50 in the last 12 months. But in ~9 months of 0 therm usage, the minimum bill is $30. (That's right, 3/5 of every home in my region is likely to overhead)
But it's not just a fleece from the billing and the rate. Maintaining the infrastructure is supported by my property taxes and state income taxes (and the additional overhead of unneeded infrastructure in road maintenance, disasters, or simple things like utility marking.
Then there are other fleeces involved that are strictly job creation. "De-regulation" where every year I have to play a game to get the best teaser rate to get the same gas (that might be traded differently) (when the state commissioner can require rates be a certain point in the market as they do of the - same company by the way - electric infrastructure.) So I have to pay with my time, and in many ways money, just to play this game.
The heat is quick, the gas stove is slower than induction (I have a single induction unit I use most of the time), and the fireplace is comforting.
Burning coal to run the electric cars.
Shutting down nuclear reactors, and increasing dependence on oil from oppressive countries.
Banning the sale of ICE vehicles, and forcing everyone to move onto electric vehicles when the existing grid can't even support air conditioning.
Punitively taxing the use of fertilizer during a time of food shortage.
I'm all out of charity guys. These people don't want to save the environment. They just want to create suffering.