Hacker News Reader

Comment by archontes | Hacker News Reader

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...

View on HN

> 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.

> 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com