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Comment by edkennedy | Hacker News Reader

This article was Sponsored by WhatTheFrack Drilling Company.

Fracking/Natural Gas follows the same playbook as big Tobacco, they hire experts and sponsor all kinds of studies that align with what they want people to believe.

The main cost here seems to be the energy monopolies, not the method of heating.

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Disagree.

I see the same thing where I live. Natural gas heating is much cheaper than electric. And we have one of the lowest electric rates in the country.

Gas heating was also cheaper when I lived in the Midwest.

In fact, I often feel the opposite of you - that Big Electric is pushing propaganda. I often see people switching to heat pumps "because it's more efficient", but they don't see their bills go down, and on top of that it's a lot more expensive to install. Even if the bills go down a little, they'll probably not make up for the added cost of equipment in the whole time they are in that house.

"much cheaper"

I can believe it has a lower price, but I'm sure the cost is higher.

Not in the least. With baseboard heating, the cost to heat my 1 bedroom apartment was on par with heating a 4 bedroom house (with gas). With a heat pump, at best it will be comparable.

Comment you're replying to was noting the difference between price-to-consumer and cost-to-planet.

> With a heat pump, at best it will be comparable.

Would it?

e.g. according to https://c03.apogee.net/mvc/home/hes/land/el?utilityname=ure&... unless you live in area with extremely expensive gas and very cheap electricity it will always be cheaper.

Thanks. Went to my gas and electric bills to look up the rates. Plugged in the numbers on the site. Heat pump estimated to cost me $400 extra per year for heating.

If I were doing a brand new build, it may make some sense just because I like to be "green". But paying several thousand just for the install, only to end up paying more per year: Just doesn't make sense.

I guess that's the crux of the green initiatives: people don't care about going green because they don't care about their environment footprint, thus generally don't care about the planet or other humans. Now if I phrased this too negative I'm sorry, but I guess I'm still right.

I think that website is wrong or using obsolete data. I compared with another https://www.pickhvac.com/hvac/furnace-vs-heat-pump-cost/ and it said that with exactly the same numbers the heatpump was 50% cheaper than gas. My own observation is that our heating cost reduced dramatically when we replaced gas with heat pump.

Electric resistive baseboard is obviously extremely foolish as a primary heating source. It's not a real point of comparison, but closer to a straw man.

The point is exactly that electric heat pumps and gas are comparable. Which means that other things start to tip the scale like not having gas in the house (fire safety), having nicer air conditioning for the summer from the same unit, offsetting the grid electricity use with your own solar (lower generation in the winter, but it still helps), and envisioning grid scale sources moving towards renewables.

I mathed it a bit. Assuming that there's no reclamation built in to current pricing, pricing in 100% reclamation would increase the cost of natural gas by ~40%. Still not more expensive than electricity if the article is to be taken at face value.

> Natural gas heating is much cheaper than electric.

Does this include the cost of dealing with the effects of emitting CO2 into the atmosphere?

The global economy runs on energy and emitting co2. Last I checked majority of electricity is mainly produced from burning fossil fuels.

You mean the costs of having to mow the lawn more or harvest more crops from all the increased plant growth?

https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization...

But also, how green is your electricity? The "electrify everything b/c it's greener" approach seems currently largely aspirational. My understanding is that most states still get most of their electricity from fossil fuels.

https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/state-electricity-g...

My electricity is 99% green (wind + solar).

So is mine, supposedly, but overall we have a long way to go in switching the grid to renewables. The states that have the lowest dependence on fossil fuels for generation all have a significant amount of hydro power, which is probably not going to expand, and which can have its own environmental issues.

Some locations have a great mix of wind + sun, so minimal backup storage may be required. What is the plan/cost for offsetting solar cell production and recycling?

Solar electricity, including panel production and disposal, is so much less emissive than even the cleanest gas generator (let alone coal or such), that I honestly find that a worry for later. Let's get the world on low emissions before nitpicking about how to get it fully circular (likely, that's near-impossible and we'll eventually need to mine other bodies in the solar/star system, but that, too, I find to be a worry for later). It comes across as though you're asking a vegetarian if they've ever killed a mosquito. Perfect is the enemy of good

If it's a serious question, then this is where carbon capture will have to come in, if our emissions aren't already low enough to be workable for the earth's natural carbon cycles

You can get a lot closer to 100% green if you have rooftop solar no matter where you are. So moving to using more electricity just recoups your investment faster assuming you've overspecced even just a little.

According to [1], burning natural gas generates 0.0053 tons per therm. According to [2], the cost to reclaim CO2 from natural gas sources is approximately $90 per ton on the high end. Some quick math done on an old gas bill of mine suggests that reclamation would increase my bill by 40% (assuming that no reclamation is presently priced in).

So... If the article is correct, and electric energy costs 77% more than natural gas, then yes. Natural gas is still cheaper when factoring in emissions.

1 - https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gases-equivalencies-ca...

2 - https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2019.006...

> So... If the article is correct, and electric energy costs 77% more than natural gas,

If you use resistive heating, heat pump would be 40-50% or so cheaper. Of course with no subsidies the initial cost might be rather high.

I'll ask my landlord to install one right away.

Probably have to be an earth-exchange system to deal with temperatures lower than 40°F, given that heating my house in winter is the use case.

My Mitsubishi Hyperheat units have a COP above 1 down to -15F and still work normally at 5F (northern New Mexico, 6000', overnight). You're getting bad information.

Mitsubishis can work down to -13F/-25C and have a COP of 2.08:

* https://mylinkdrive.com/viewPdf?srcUrl=http://enter.mehvac.c...

If you live in US IECC Climate Zone 4 or above look for a cold climate air-source heat pump (ccASHP):

* https://neep.org/heating-electrification/ccashp-specificatio...

* https://ashp.neep.org/#!/

You can also get things installed in a dual fuel arrangement where you still have a gas furnace that kicks in if it does ever get 'too cold'.

My Lennox system is break even COP at -10 iirc. By then it's also running the heat strip, but we only hit those temps once or twice a year.

> According to [2], the cost to reclaim CO2 from natural gas sources is approximately $90 per ton on the high end

I may be reading that wrong, but I'm pretty sure that refers to the CCS cost when you capture at use (e.g. in a power plant). You can't really use CCS when you're heating a house, so the right price to compare to would be direct air capture which is an order of magnitude more expensive IIUC.

Let's see if we can fix that.

Found this article: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-captured-co2-worth that suggests it's about twice as expensive. Though it seems that's the credit that the government pays, not the cost.

https://www.iea.org/reports/direct-air-capture-2022/executiv... suggests $125-$335 per ton, so not quite an order of magnitude but still a big difference for CCS.

Your [2] reference is about capture & storage for nat-gas power plants. Natural gas for heating is done at the endpoint. That's going to cost a lot more to capture.

From the perspective of an individual consumer it doesn't matter much. e.g. if you 100% rational (which is not necessarily the best approach) there is no additional cost for you related to you choosing to use gas regardless of what happens with the climate.

That's not being rational, that is being individualistic and short-sighted in name of greed/saving cash. Rationally you want to keep the Earth viable for human populations, for at least the sake of the future of your family if you are that individualistic.

Not on the individual level, free-riding is perfectly rational if you goal is to maximize your personal wellbeing, wealth etc.

Perhaps the issue then is the hyperindividualisation after the atomisation of society.

To my mind it's not perfectly rational to maximise my personal wellbeing and wealth in detriment of others, maybe I have a collectivist sense higher than others, maybe we should instill that across societies.

The 20th century went too far with the me-first approach, we can see it's not really working for societies.

You will pay for it anyway, in terms of increased taxes or insurance rates to pay for areas damaged by climate change, increased food and housing costs as useful land shrinks, and to pay for the upcoming climate refugee crises and ensuing wars. Pay a little more now, or pay a lot more later.

My lay understanding is that gas is generally produced as a byproduct of pumping oil.

Consequently, as long as it's profitable to pump oil... more gas will be supplied to the market.

Which means that gas prices will generally be "low" (relative to energy content?) close to oil producers, as it's still profitable to "produce" gas even at low market prices (because you're mainly producing/selling more oil).

This is generally correct, that gas is often a byproduct. Consider the location and availability of gas pipeline and collector/compressor stations. And sometimes when pipelines are present they are already at capacity. It is a fascinating industry that is greening (less flaring, electric drilling).

Yes, for most of us, the cost of natural gas is almost completely transportation costs. The gas itself is only a very small fraction of our bill.

Gas costs just what the gas company asks for it, which is equal to what they think you’ll pay for it.

So it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to do this comparison to make some environmental point.

just pulled typical split-system listing in my country:

Gree Lomo Arctic R32 Inverter 2022 , about €740 (this is one of the top makers)

energy used while cooling: 0.7kW

energy used while heating: 0.7kW

cooling power: 2.7kW

heating power: 3kW

4x efficiency, yay! that's what heat pumps do

outside temperature from +43C to -25C. i've seen -30C and +48C in some models

Also, installation for split units is cheap around here

Split units in the US tend to be crazy expensive. When I was shopping for an AC, it was definitely a few thousand more than a regular (central) AC. I know folks in other countries buy it all the time, so it must be cheaper there.

"Cooling" and "heating" just means the inside coil is colder/warmer than the outside, it does not mean the inside temperature will be comfortable for everyone. Neither while cooling nor while heating.

Could you please explain what you mean? Split system in question is air-air, heat transfers between blocks via special liquid, and warmer /colder air spread through a room via fan. There are no coils. Also, keeping comfortable temperature inside is function of heat loss via walls/windows and effective power of cooling/heating

The special liquid is running through a system of tubes, called "coils" so it could exchange heat with the air. Keeping comfortable temperatures inside is also a function of the inside coil's temperature, which depends on the special liquid and the compressor. The higher temperature difference between the inside and outside coils, the higher compression is required and lower is the COP. Incidentally, the high inside coil's temperature is also required to heat the air inside at a reasonable rate.

technically speaking, you can crank up internal fan speed to eleven and get exhaust temperature slightly above current room temperature even if internals are way too hot. regular resistive heaters do that, with their heating elements fired up way past boiling water temperature

The problem is not the exhaust being too hot, but the heating element being too cold. Gas furnace, for example, burns gas at temperatures much higher than that of boiling water.

  This article was Sponsored by WhatTheFrack Drilling Company.

Where did you see that? I don’t see the reference anywhere.

Edit: feel free to downvote. I’m not defending the content, I just thought it was interesting. Maybe we should tax fuel oil or something. I just don’t see this report as being some shadowy conspiracy with an oil company.

Downvoted because people don’t like the question? I would also like to know, apparently others don’t

Same question here. I can't find the reference either. The author is also not labeled as a third party or anything, the word frack doesn't occur on the page, and the word sponsored doesn't appear in the article.

I guess people upvote the top-level comment because it sounds so plausible? But in reality it was meant as a joke and people (like me) were taking it literally?

It was written in part (I suspect in large part) by Robert Bryce [1], an oil and gas industry apologist, who has - if nothing else - been consistently arguing against renewable energy and for oil and gas interests for 30 years.

He's been funded by and a fellow with the Institute for Energy Research [2], a front group for Exxon Mobil, Enron, and Charles Koch, and with the Manhattan Institute [3], a corporate-funded conservative think tank, also funded largely by the petroleum industry.

The title of the article and main thrust is that if you use electric resistive space heaters and baseboards, it will cost more than gas. Everyone knows that. No one is seriously steel-man arguing for electric resistive heating (anymore), only heat pumps. I'm shocked it's only a mere 77% more, I would have assumed 2x or 3x.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bryce_(writer)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy...

  It was written in part (I suspect in large part) by Robert Bryce

I don't see that he's an author or indicated as helping outside of an interview. He's quoted in the story, although not with the detail you provided.

I am an adamant supporter of electrification and of sustainable energy, but I don't see why we can't read articles such as this one, which seems to cover many points about the cost of heat pumps, the expense of energy, and many other aspects of the economics of the issue without needing to be spoon fed a story 'from our side' or whatever.

$46.19 for electricity is a little more than 3x the $13.97 for gas.

I'm not downvoting you but if you're being downvoted it's because you failed to do some due diligence and actually look up the answer to your question.

I've taken the step to do a basic lookup when replying in haste and gotten a genuine TIL moment that added to the discourse here instead of asking an easily answered question.

It's literally the playbook of every single business. Database vendors and graphics card manufacturers tout studies that show their product performs better. Pharmaceutical companies pay researchers who conduct studies that show their stuff works. If Safeway wants a zoning variance to open a new store, they will pay for an environmental impact study that says it's fine.

I'm not saying this to convince you should trust this study. But I think it's important to recognize it's absolutely happening everywhere, not just in the industries we don't like. Most of the research we read was paid for, and an overwhelming majority of it reaches the conclusion that aligns with the views of the researchers or of whoever is footing the bill.

Here is the original report, no fracking sponsorship. The data in the article is accurate.

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/WinterFuels.php#tab...

From near the table you linked to:

> the expenditures included for households that heat primarily with electricity in this report would also include electricity used for appliances and lighting

That's not a fair comparison (gaslighting?) unless you use gas lighting, a gas dishwasher, and a gas freezer!

It also doesn't mention what heat pump efficiency is assumed, it just compares electricity "as a fuel" to other fuels, which means resistive heating. Wholly unrealistic for places that need any serious amount of heating per year.

(I was surprised to learn that a colleague in South Africa was cold and couldn't turn on the heater during their winter because they don't have heating installed! A 10€ space heater and some blankets is all they need for heat around there apparently. There, resistive heating makes sense as compared to an expensive heat pump system.)

The amount of electricity used by appliances and lighting is negligible compared to that used by the air conditioner compressor. Even the air conditioning fan is hardly more than a few light bulbs.

So while it's good that the report quibbled, they might have gone to the effort to quantify their equivalent at least to an order of magnitude.

PR is all that is left when government is leaning into the destruction of your business and its harmful externalities (heat pump subsidies). Electric resistive heat is inefficient, heat pumps are not.

They also don't function well below 40°F/4°C

Weird. Mine (Mitsubishi Hyperheat) have a COP above 1 down to -15F, and I've seen them work just fine at 5F (New Mexico, 6000', winter nights). Check your data.

COP "above 1" is nothing to brag about. I'd say that a COP of around 2 should be the minimum at which a heat pump is considered "working". Otherwise this propaganda seemingly based around the cost of resistive heating actually becomes relevant. (I've no idea of the exact current state of the art though).

COP == 1 is the point at which a heat pump becomes a resistive heater. As COP drops below 1, a heat pump becomes more and more like an actual resistive heater.

Nobody is bragging about COP == 1 ... it's just a reference point at which the benefit of a heat pump goes away and it becomes ... just an inefficient heater.

I just think this whole topic gets derailed in many ways by the lure of comparing things to resistive heating (eg the original article), and using parity with resistive heating as a reference point for practical heat pump source temperatures is an instance of this. The benefit from a heat pump has left long before COP = 1. I'd say a COP of 3ish (modern modcon boiler efficiency divided by common gas power plant efficiency) is a straightforward honest appraisal of where a heat pump starts to be less than ideal.

Of course I recognize low temperatures are merely one small portion of the time. Residential heat pump system design has generally taken advantage of this by having backup resistive coils. It would be much more efficient to fall back to a gas furnace, but for the capital cost. So an actual comparison necessarily takes into account expected temperatures over the day and the heating season, likely nighttime setback, thermal mass, etc. Which certainly isn't easy to button up into a simple comparison, but the point is resistive heating is a red herring!

You're drawing the wrong conclusion from the right numbers.

Sure, a heat pump with a COP of <2 is basically broken, but consider on how many hours of how many days it's actually going to perform at such a poor efficiency level.

Overall, your greenhouse gas emissions will be an order of magnitude below gas heating. Today, or at least until recently, it's about break-even at a COP of 3 iirc, but with solar and wind being the targets, it's going to be near zero by the time a heat pump bought today goes end-of-life.

This is not factually correct. As sibling comment mentions, they work down to -15F. You might need backup heat in the coldest climates on the coldest days, but a high thermal performance (insulation and tight envelope) of structure is most important.

https://cleanheat.ny.gov/heat-pumps-cold-climates-do-they-wo...

ya electric baseboard are expensive to tun

heatpumps are really cheap to run

> heatpumps are really cheap to run

But still more expensive than gas in most areas? Unless you get a ground pump etc. which has a much higher upfront cost.

As a nonamerican, I'm not sure how to read "most places" here. Do you mean most places in the USA or actually most places in the world?

i would say if you have a gas HVAC there is little point in replacing unless you also have a lot of solar on the roof and sending a lot back to the grid.

If I was building a new home today and in an area that might get down to 10-15F as a low i'd 100% do heat pumps. The nice part about heat pumps for me is that they might get to temp and run at 10% all day long and keep the heat right at 71. Where a gas will turn on at 69 and heat till 73 and continue that cold/hot cycle

being cheaper also depends on current utility rates also

> But still more expensive than gas in most areas?

Using numbers from the non-profit Efficiency Maine, with natural/methane gas at $2.561 per CCF (therm), and electricity at $0.1595 per kWh, standard efficiency heat pumps have better $/MMBtu down to about 0F/-18C, and high performance HPs down to about -10F/-25C, per this presentation:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcwIz6heDss&t=39m30s

You'll have to do the math with your local prices. The same channel also has a presentation on dual fuel / hybrid setups:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_9P3Dn7is0

Generally: if you're buying new HVAC+D equipment for your home, you might as well buy a heat pump instead of a 'simple' AC unit, and there are heat pumps that can work down below freezing quite well (which is probably good enough for most of the US population, except in the coldest locations).

And if you're building a new subdivision or apartment block, you can skip the entire gas system connection. Safer and cheaper.

Places off the current gas grid are also low hanging fruit generally.

This "77%" is nothing new, just the latest, most up-to-date price quote on their terms.

IMHO the real percentage is more like 200% more.

It was this way even before the price of energy skyrocketed in the early 1970's.

People in their all-electric homes didn't care about the cost multiple when it was only a few dollars difference every month.

The underlying physics are hard to argue against, it simply takes about 3 times as much natural gas to generate the electricity to heat one home, compared to using gas heat burned directly for the same amount of indoor heating.

So you pay about 3 times as much for the same amount of electric heat as you do gas and that ratio has been holding steady for many decades.

I also expect the differential to be maintained even after power plants are further decoupled from natural gas fuel supplies themselves.

This is a good reason to be extra skeptical, but is not itself much of an argument. Is there any evidence their analysis is materially wrong?

A search seems to indicate there is not a drilling company named "WhatTheFrack".

I think that was part of OP's joke. I took the test of the post at face value though and feel mislead... This should not be the top comment

Where are you seeing this? Right there in the article, it says that a heat pump would be around the same price as gas!

It kinda makes sense. You can burn natural gas to make electricity. You get 0.4 energy units of electricity for each energy unit of natural gas. Heat pump COP is say 3.5. So you get 1.4 units of heating out. Converting to electricity has costs that eat away at that 1.4 units.

Call it a wash.

The big differences are the electric grid can be powered by zero carbon sources. And burning natural gas is a local pollutant. And if you ditch gas you don't need to maintain commercial and residential gas infrastructure.

You gotta have proof before saying that. Otherwise it sounds like lefty bleeding heart conspiracy theories that turn out to have some sort of evil agenda

False.

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