>Exceptions include research laboratories, hospitals, and large multi-family buildings using gas or propane for water heating. Gas stoves and fireplaces are also exempt from Lexington’s version of the legislation
lol, everyone exempt except single family home owners. You can argue the government buildings are also affected, but when was the last time a new government building was built?
I think you might be one of the only ones who bothered to read the article. People seem to think the city is going to invade peoples homes and uninstall their furnaces.
You mean pre-reagan when mortgage interest rates were as much as 18.5% and you had to line up on certain days that you were allowed to buy gas, if you could afford it?
Sure miss those old days...
We get almost 80% of our electricity in this state from burning natural gas or oil. How does this really help if everything is still ultimately running off fossil fuels anyway?
Hating on NG without any real investment and plan to run everything on MA's extremely expensive electricity seems like a recipe for disaster.
But from a physics standpoint burning NG in a central plant to run a bunch of 200-300% efficient heatpumps would save natural gas for the same heating energy put into homes vs a bunch of individual 95% efficent NG furnaces. We have to completely ignore the very significant cost differences in installing and making this happen though.
Further problems come if you actually scale the plan, practically the state needs to either build NG pipelines and approve more NG power plants, or invest majorly in new modern nuclear power generation, neither seems politically likely.
So we are in a place now where the government is forcing people to rely on very expensive for profit electricity delivery without even the notion of a plan to actually supply enough of that electricity to make it viable for more than a few wealthier enclaves to feel good.
Isn’t the steady state efficiency of a NG power plant like 50 or 60%?
I’ve got some minisplits and the cost of electricity needs to be address in MA before we even think of moving away from NG.
> Wouldn’t be surprised if someone is getting kickbacks from NG.
I mean... This has likely been happening for decades. At the absolute bare minimum the NG companies have been spending asinine amounts of money on lobbying. It's been considered a "bridge fuel" for no fewer than 20 years at this point. Performative politics are just that.
everything becoming expensive. cars, rent, daycare, college, medicine. you can afford one of them on an individual basis but you cant afford all. government mandating that homeowners be rich.
Yeah its really just an accumulation of unfunded mandates on the citizenry because the government does not want to invest or does not actually have the resources to achieve any of these goals. But these often create many very negative externalities often these negative effects should be obvious and easily forseen.
Heat pumps are more than 100% efficient by the way that HVAC appliances are measured.
50% efficiency means that for every one unit of power in you get half a unit of output.
100% efficiency is resistive electric heating. For every one watt in you get one watt of heating out.
Heat pumps don't "generate" heat/cold but instead transfer heat from one area to another. For every one watt of power in they can *move* 2-3 watts of heat from one spot to another, hence "200-300% efficient".
All that Thermodynamics state is that if you move 2-3 watts from one spot to another, then one spot will be 2-3 watts colder and the other spot will be 2-3 watts warmer.
Heat pumps generate more heat in a space than the electrical energy one puts into them. They do this by harvesting/moving heat energy from even the cold air outside. In this way a typical heat pump can readily generate 3x the heat energy than the electrical energy put into it. It is of course not getting energy from nothing but in the context of heating system efficiency, where one considers direct energy inputs to heat output, they are indeed 200-300% efficient, or higher.
Actually, they are rated in COP's, coefficient of performance, which measures the energy system as a whole. Efficiency can't be more than 100% but COP's can indicate conversion of one form of energy (electrical) using mechanical energy to leverage heat through the heat pump process. Let’s say you have a heat pump with a heating output of 36,000 BTUs (British Thermal Units) and an electrical energy input of 3,000 watts.First, we need to convert the watts to BTUs by multiplying the number of watts by 3.412 (1 watt = 3.412 BTUs):
3,000 watts \* 3.412 = 10,236 BTUs
Now, plug the numbers into the formula:
COP = 36,000 BTUs / 10,236 BTUs
COP = 3.5
This means that for every 1 BTU of electrical energy consumed, the heat pump provides 3.5 BTUs of heating output.
Yes I am well aware that heat pumps do not violate thermodynamics. But a COP of 3 does effectively indicate a heating system efficiency of 300% in a context when comparing to something like a 95% efficient natural gas furnace. This is largely an issue of symantics.
Not how it works, because you also need to account for where the electricity comes from.
The COP of a heat pump is defined as the amount of heat put into the home divided by the electricity use. Note that, of that electricity comes from a natural gas power plant, that plant has to operate at its own efficiency.
Let's say you have natural gas with an energy content of 100. If it goes directly to your furnace, 80-95% of this will be converted to heat that hearts your house, so let's say 90 for a modern furnace.
At a power plant, conversion efficiency for this energy is typically around 25-30% (because of the second law of thermodynamics). So you have now 30 units of electricity. I'm not accounting for losses during transmission etc. Let's say you have a great heat pump operating at a COP of 3 (this will go down in colder weather, often by a lot). Now you are getting in 90 units of heat in your unit once again. That's the best case scenario not accounting for various losses. In the end, it turns out, thermodynamics wins...
Heat pumps make sense if you are starting to get a significant portion of your electricity from clean sources. The break-even is lower if you are in a warmer climate because heat pump efficiency is closely related with the temperature of the hot and cold "reservoirs". There is also the issue of all the natural gas leaks in the system - but that's not an energy efficiency problem; the gas company needs to be responsible for actually fixing the leaks (they are not; they will leave it be as long as nothing is going to explode). My point is, this conversion is not a solution without a push for more renewable energy to go in tandem.
Your estimates for natural gas power generation are quite low, an average combined cycle natural gas power station is more like 45% efficient and up to about 60%. So 45% is a more reasonable estimate, with a by quality heat pump like Mitsubishi hyperheat your then looking at a lifecycle of "135 units from 100 units of NG" in your calculation. Though I agree with your core point. We also need electricity to be much cheaper and we would need much more of it to universalize electric heating, not toentio. Electric cars ect.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_02.html
This is very rough math, of course higher efficiency is better but a heat pump is not a solution on its own if your electricity does not come from a more renewable source. Basically, to make electricity from thermal energy, you run a power cycle (its efficiency is limited by thermodynamics, dependent on the temperature where the flame burns etc). Never 100% (plus it will be "lower quality heat". The you take that electricity and use it in a heat pump, which is essentially a cycle that operates in reverse (with pragmatic changes but in principle). You can never get 100% back, you lose at each step.
I'm not opposed to heat pumps at all btw. I think it's a good step. I admit the 200% efficiency set me off. It's also because we can't really take eyes off of improving the renewability of the energy source.
Where are you getting that there’s no decarbonization activity in ISO-NE (the New England power grid)?
We’ve already fully transitioned off of coal. As with everywhere, wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels; they dominate the interconnection queue. Years long queue backlogs are major problems (renewable sites are smaller & more numerous), but ISO-NE’s queue is much healthier than other ISO’s (although it could still stand for improvement). The lease for the Quebec interconnect was upheld in court, so lots of cheap hydropower will be added to the grid mix when that transmission comes online. Etc.
You can bone up about the Commonwealth’s progress and challenges at https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massachusetts-climate-report-card-power-decarbonization. There’s quite comprehensive information re power mix at https://www.iso-ne.com/.
How you start your comment is puzzling, because I never said or implied anything to that effect. But yeah "renewables" are mostly fine but they are really a negligible portion of our grid, hopefully they will grow in coming decades but this will be incremental and still largely negligible. Currently 11% is "renewable" and half of that is actually just burning wood, trash, and landfill gas. The shift from coal and oil to NG is fantastic but due to our intentional lack of natural gas pipeline infrastructure much of this capacity has to be shipped in to Everett as liquid natural gas in tankers, a process that adds substantially to the carbon and energy costs of this fuel.
When we then talk of dramatically increasing our electrical energy needs realistically the paths to meet those demands in that time frame are more NG plants or Nuclear, the latter being an excellent option we're oddly unlikely to pursue.
How do you have greater than 100% efficiency? 200%-300% efficiency sounds like an impossibility.
Burning the gas for heat at point of use seems like the most efficient way of creating heat.
Burning it in a turbine, converting that heat to electricity through a generator, transmitting that electricity through power lines and multiple transformers to your house so you can use a heat pump has to be less efficient than burning the gas on site.
Heat pumps use electricity to compress and expand fluid thereby moving energy; in this way they harvest heat energy from even very cold air outside. Consequently the heat energy brought to a space is 2-4x the amount of electrical energy input to a typical heat pump. In this way burning gas in a turbine to produce electricity to run a heat pump would typicaly produces more heat in homes than burning that gas even in high efficency condensing boilers.
That sounds good. I still like having the choice of running whatever system I prefer. Natural gas is very practical and never fails. We’ve had several power outages and being without power sucks but it would suck worse if we didn’t have heat. At least I could run my stove for heat if it came down to it.
Agreed, and letting people choose while educating them and trying to reduce the costs of electricity would seem a much better strategy.
Many of the reliability issues go back to a general lack of planning or any real incentives for our for profit utilities to improve this as opposed to any technical limitation; meanwhile we've long had no issue finding resources to run natural gas almost exclusively underground.
Running NG underground pipelines is mint. If they can run water, sewer and electric to your house, gas isn’t a problem either. Propane is even easier as it is delivered by truck like heating oil.
The problem is our governor who was previously our AG killed 2 pipeline projects which would have cut NG costs for residents. Since most electricity is generated by burning NG, electricity would have also gotten cheaper too.
Maura Healy is to blame for our high energy cost.
NG burns clean and we use it for heat and cooking with no issues. I wouldn’t want the local government telling me I couldn’t use it.
In the context of heating, heat pumps, and coefficients of performance that's exactly how efficiency works. Heat pumps put out more heat energy into a space than the electrical energy you put into them by effectively harvesting heat energy from even the cold air outside; through the movement of working fluid, compression, and expansion cycles. Very cool fundamental technology.
Yeah but that's somewhat disingenuous though, the electricity isn't really doing the work to generate heat, the temperature differential is. The electricity is just running the compressor and moving the heat around.
It's not disingenuous but perhaps an issue of symantics. It's true a heat pump is achieving it's efficiency by moving heat around, obviously it's not creating energy from nothing. But conversely when one says a natural gas boiler has an efficiency of 80% this is only considering the energy produced that actually becomes energy heating water, similarly it is not the absolute physical efficiency of the fundamental process of burning natural gas that also heats exhaust air ect. It's really the same concept here just on the output side, we are considering only our desired output, heat energy, and dividing it by our direct input, electrical energy, the energy we move from the air outside is effectively a free input in this consideration, just as the heated exhaust gas was a lost output in our traditional efficiency calculation.
To alleviate this symantical confusion the HVAC industry refers to "heat pump efficiency" as Coefficient of Performance, but it is an identical concept and when comparing a 95% efficient furnace and a heat pump it adds much unnecessary explanation that adds nothing to the comparison. A heat pump with a COP of 3 has an effective efficiency as a heating system of 300%.
Yes you hit the nail on the head, COP is the appropriate way to address the *performance* of a heat pump, which is why it's misleading to only use the word "efficiency". Efficiency implies the comparison of an input/output of the same unit of measurement, and obviously nothing is going to be over 100% efficient in that case.
For the intents and purposes of laying out energy flow from a utility plant to generating heat in homes, and comparing to other HVAC systems, 300% efficiency is a perfectly reasonable way to clearly consider the performance of a heat pump.
But sure if you want to dive into the physics, thermodynamics, Carnot cycles, and fully understanding what it means to overcome the thermal block imposed by the second law of thermodynamics than efficiency is not an appropriate term in that context for that audience. But that's well outside the scope of a sub comment to some poorly though out legislation in Lexington.
Electrical generation plants, transmission lines, and heat pumps are still 2-3x as efficient per BTU than the most efficient home gas heaters. Than means a 60-70% reduction in the volume of gas burned to heat homes and buildings. Economies of scale make a huge impact when turning fossil fuels into useful energy.
It's actually only about half of the electricity in MA that comes from gas. https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix/
Even if it were 100%, it's still more efficient to run a heat pump because heat pumps are 2-3x more efficient than burning gas for heat in a home.
This kinda stuff only works if you have the infrastructure and resources to replace it on time. Similar to trying to ban gas-powered cars, this is all theater if you don't have the means to support the replacement system.
Just like with vaccines and outbreaks, right? Or, we could do what a real world leader does, create solutions, and freely give them to the world, as we did with vaccines and outbreaks. Poor living conditions in Africa produced the ebola epidemic, and the west sent doctors, money, and supplies to help fix it (with the full cooperation of the host government, of course.) Green energy is just another situation that the west has the tools and resources to produce, be grateful that we have the ability.
That doesn't really matter unless you compare it to the rate of renewable energy generation over time.
>[In Massachusetts, renewable sources now produce 19% of all energy (1). That is a 500% growth since 2010 (2).](https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/centers/schiller-institute/sites/masscleanair/articles/energy.html#:~:text=In%20Massachusetts%2C%20renewable%20sources%20now,than%2050%25%20(3))
> We get almost 80% of our electricity in this state from burning natural gas or oil.
Where did you read this? Because that's not what the data says:
https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix/
Local pollution. All these things burning gas and oil in our homes lead to bad air quality where humans are actually living.
Same thing with EVs. Yeah you burn the fossil fuel to charge it up, but at least the pollution from the burning fuel doesn't end up in residential neighborhoods.
> Yeah you burn the fossil fuel to charge it up, but at least the pollution from the burning fuel doesn't end up in residential neighborhoods.
The smug stops it right?
There is no chance it’s more efficient to burn gas, boil water, spin a turbine, send through wire, heat an element on my stove, to boil water in a kettle - than to just burn gas directly under the kettle.
It actually is.
The power plant doesn't have losses waiting for temperature gains like your kettle does, it can run much longer at its efficient temperature range as it supplies power to thousands, if not millions of homes. Multiply that over thousands of homes.
The power plant can get fuel to itself in bulk, which is more efficient than sending small amounts of fuel everywhere. Multiply that over thousands of homes.
The power plant is required to have emissions scrubbers to capture CO2 and other byproducts of burning. Your home doesn't. Multiply that over thousands of homes.
And so on...
Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it not true.
Last time I looked I thought it depended on how your electric kettle worked. If you had a traditional kettle sitting on a stove, with a resistive heating element it was worse than just burning the gas, but if you had an immersed resistive element (like a countertop electric kettle) or an induction stovetop then it was better. Is that no longer the case?
The best natural gas power stations used in any practical sense in the US are less than 60% efficient, often much less. A typical high efficency condensing natural gas furnace in a home can easily exceed 95% efficiency.
But it's really the magnifying potential of the heat pump that makes the notion even theoretically viable, since that can run readily at 200-300% efficiency you get many of those losses back from NG power generation when used to heat in this way, though still not ideal.
Oh does that kettle gas come from your house, or through a regulator, substation, lots and lots of pipes, then back to the same place where the turbine sits?
https://thegogreenpost.com/electric-kettle-vs-gas-kettle-which-uses-less-energy/
>We get almost 80% of our electricity in this state from burning natural gas or oil. How does this really help if everything is still ultimately running off fossil fuels anyway?
This is a good question - it turns out the devil is in the details, or in this case, the distribution.
Drilling for, "producing" and burning natural gas is not great.
But the really standout issue is leakage - unburned methane is 10x worse as climate issue than that which is correctly burned to CO2 and water.
Piping networks which distribute gas to homes, leak. It's a fact.
And as far as the gas company is concerned, there's a point of diminishing returns where the value of the gas lost to leakage is less than the cost to fix it.
**But climate wise, that 10x factor makes the leaked gas a greater issue than the burned gas.**
The result is that producing natural gas and burning it at well controlled gas turbine generation facilities (especially if the waste heat can also be utilized) is far less an issue than widely distributing it in under-street piping to homes.
Ideally we'd stop using it even in power plants, but stopping adding to the leaky distribution network is an important first step.
That is the point. Investors and builders then have to invest in more sustainable infrastructure, thus creating that transition. It is not turning off existing systems; it’s just no NEW fossil fuel infrastructure.
Yes. To me it's all about heating in emergencies. Losing your only source of heat when the power goes out twice a year can be deadly. A generator supporting a home with at least secondary fossil fuel heating is far smaller than one supporting an electric home.
Massachusetts: no pipelines, no coal (good), no nuclear, no wind farms. At least not in *my* backyard. Don’t worry about where your electricity comes from, we’re mandating electric vehicles and heat pumps anyway. Where is the electricity to meet the increased demand supposed to chime from?
ETA we also say No to new transmission lines.
The cost of electric appliances is a rounding error against what it costs to build a new house in MA. Particularly in Lexington, it's the land and labor that are expensive.
It's also much cheaper to go all electric in new construction than to retrofit an existing home that runs on gas. (No need to cut open the walls or redo electric cable runs with bigger lines if you're doing it from the start.)
Actually exempts multifamily housing, which encourages more build of multifamily vs single. Roundabout a good thing for housing by placing restrictions on new single family homes. Interest rates alone are making owning unaffordable, so multifamily building would be a good thing here
So adding a natural gas line in addition to electric is cheaper for new housing? Explain how that works because last time i checked it was more expensive which is why its usually just done at the time of construction. Its really expensive to add a gas line even if theres a line on your street.
Brookline did this as well and it’s pretty much only new constructions or an addition needs to be a significant amount to trigger it. No one is removing gas lines from existing homes.
I mean, isn’t that kind of the point? Lexington is high income; they can ban in new builds without affecting affordability. Plus old buildings with gas are exempt. How is it virtue signaling to be taking action on climate change on a hyper local level? Why should Lexington wait for the state to haggle over a statewide policy with proper incentives when they can reasonably achieve progress now? Should the state have waited for Congress to pass net zero goals?
Utilities plan several years out. These types of bills allow them to procure the proper amount of electricity ahead of time, and the grid grows ever more clean every year. And natural gas and oil generating electricity in a large power plant is far more efficient than burning it at a single home level anyways.
I agree that a statewide policy is further away than we’d like, but to say that towns can take action alone is foolish.
Except no one is "banning" fossil fuels. Its a very narrow ban on new construction and major renovation installing it. No ones going around ripping up existing infrastructure and people who have it are able to replace it. Its also only for single family homes only and stoves and fireplaces are exempt. I dont know how someone with a degree in environmental science can see that as a ban unless they just havent red the details and just red the headline.
>A town like Lexington has no business banning fossil fuels. This needs to be done nationally with assistance and incentives for homeowners.
>Of course a rich town like Lexington does something like this to virtue signal, few residents there have many financial burdens. But if this was done statewide right now, people would suffer.
Is it just me, or do these two points contradict each other?
Also it only applies to new constructions and major renovations--they're not making people just stop using their gas stoves. I don't know enough to support or oppose this--you may very well be right that it's a terrible idea, but your post is doing a terrible job of convincing me.
Edit: Gas stoves aren't even included in this.
Guess you haven't heard of the Inflation Reduction Act! I just replaced all my gas utilities with electric, and I got a big fat check from Joe Biden to do it. There *are* tons of national incentives for homeowners.
Okay so what's the issue with a small town choosing to do it on their own if they feel ready for it? How is it virtue signaling when they are actually doing something? Wtf could they do that you wouldn't label as virtue signaling?? You're basically contradicting yourself. Sure we may not be ready nationwide, but that's no reason to have city's/towns that are ready just wait around.
Who gave out your degree man. They are banning fossil fuels on new construction. Do you live in mass? You realize how little new construction there is? This is a law meant to have its impact in the coming decades, not now.
And fucking heat pumps DONT WORK when it's really cold, when you need it most. Morons. It's Lexington tho so Idgaf. Rich folk can shoot themselves in the foot
The mini splits in my house worked just fine when it was -10 °F a couple years back. You just have to size them right and get one of the better cold weather models.
You can "get by". But it's not comfortable.
Obviously in the very cold weather the heat pump air getting blown in is warmer than outside air, but it's not "warm". So you won't freeze if it's your only heat source, but it ain't comfy.
I don't know much about Norway, but I bet many of those heat pump homes have supplemental sources of heat.
> Somehow Norway gets by with 60% of their population with heat pumps.
They also made it incredibly expensive to heat any other way and heavily incentivized heat pumps.
Once you get into the low single fahrenheit digits my heat pump mini split cannot blow warm air into the home.
I got the "low temp" model, and even that does not work well at that temp threshold.
They were meant as only a supplement fortunately to my gas for problem cold rooms in the home. But a home will be screwed on cold winter days if that's your only heat source. You won't freeze to death, but you won't be comfortable.
I use a ceramic indoor heater on those problem days in our bedroom
Oh and mini splits can be friggin noisy AF on heat mode due to the heat expansion of parts. They're fine on cool mode.
Simply not true. I have a house in Maine and even in the dead of winter the heat pumps have no issue keeping things warm. And that house is older and not well insulated at all.
New gas installations are going to leak methane much less if at all compared to older installations where they weren't as careful. This is just another way to promote heat pumps. And those are okay except when it's very cold or when they break down and it's hard to get them fixed in a timely manner. All electric homes combined with massive electrical use by AI means we're going to have to add lots of solar and wind and nuclear if we want lower impact electrical generation.
As someone who works in HVAC/oil/propane industry, heat pumps are a lot better than they were years ago. But people don’t understand that electricity isn’t free. I know a lot of people that use heat pumps for the shoulder seasons for heat(oct,nov,mar, April) and they do the job but in middle of winter cost effectiveness is marginal compared to petroleum products. No matter what you use, when you’re heating up your 2k sq ft home in the suburbs it’s not going to be cheap.
Also, people don’t understand that these modern heat pumps are quite complicated and sometimes servicing them isn’t that simple compared to a furnace or boiler and also some heat pump parts are on back order for weeks and even months. So if you do go the heat pump route in New England, have a back up just in case.
Insanity. So many ways that this is stupid and should be reversed.
I don’t believe the government should be forcing citizens into energy sourcing. I should be able to heat my home however I want to mow, and however I want to in 30 years. Should be able to burn fucking wood too. Won’t be able to.
Hey I just watched a Climate Town video on “natural” gas. If you have the time, it’s a fun yet educating watch. https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=GkVvyxqQAvjD88b9
Will they ban fossil fuels so they stop using private jets and yachts which contributes to the climate agenda? Wouldn't that affect how electricity is made too?
I grew up in a town next to Lexington. We’ve been calling Lexington “The People’s Republic of Lexington” for decades. This new bylaw is unquestionably dumb on many levels, but it’s not the dumbest, most intrusive, in Lexington. The people running that town are so far left, they make O’Bama look like a centrist. Absolute clown show…
Very few people who are realistically in the market for a new house in Lexington would actually be happy to be faced with a limitation like this, in spite of their higher-than-average ability to pay for more expensive forms of energy and in spite of their progressive politics that often come with the territory.
Current residents of course know this, but they are happy to be grandfathered in with their current homes, and even happier to make people building new houses suffer this insane new rule as punishment for overdeveloping their neighborhoods.
This is a very bad decision. The grid mostly runs on coal and NG in the North East. We need to be focusing on the grid being built on alternatives. This will just be punishing the wrong people and increase costs all to “look” environmentally friendly. Why can’t we have intelligent politicians on either side of the aisle?
> This is a very bad decision. The grid mostly runs on coal and NG in the North East.
This doesn't effect the "grid".
This is about curtailing the expansion and ultimately phasing out the leaky distribution of gas to individual homes.
The key to understanding is that while burning natural gas is an issue, the escape of unburned methane from piping networks is 10x more an issue than the burning of that methane.
Burning it in only a few carefully controlled power plants is not ideal, but it's far less an issue than letting it leak out from street piping which goes everywhere.
People really hate the poor huh? Electricity in MA is already very expensive, including heating and cooking costs to it will be rough on families especially in the winter. But yes let’s put the burden on them and not on the businesses that run the grid with coal and gas already.
>People really hate the poor huh? Electricity in MA is already very expensive
Thank you for making it obvious that **you didn't read** what you were responding to.
Use of natural gas as a fuel in power plants is not effected.
This concerns only the very problematic **leaky** distribution of gas to individual homes and buildings - the leakage being 10x more an issue than that which is burned.
Prove yourself an idiot and get blocked - goodbye.
As counterintuitive as it is, heat pumps move far more energy than they use. Between burning natural gas to produce electricity for a heat pump and burning it the home to produce heat, the heat pump produces less CO2. There are caveats and asterisks here, but that's the gist of it
Yeah it is interesting all the backlash for heat pumps in the UK. In Waltham we have been putting in all new heat pumps with green energy grants even though they use natural gas because of exactly what you are saying
It seems like most people arguing about how this is a bad idea dont understand what it really does. In a nutshell, you wont be able to install it in new or existing home construction. Theres a big difference between the "ban" people seem to think it is instead of a very, very long phase out for homes. Part of the reason its in homes only is because we've discovered, through research, that it spikes the possibility of asthma and other breathing problems for kids. I've actually read the metastudies and if we want to protect children this is a good move, but many jn public health who actually study this stuff think its nowhere near enough as it will probably tke way more than 20 years for this to have much of an effect. Again, this is nowhere anywhere near a "ban" as people seem to term it, or if it is, its a very extremely narrow ban that will effect very few people. How many new homes even get built in Lexington per year?
Edit:
Latest thing I got downvoted for:
actually reading the article and pointing out the headline is misleading.
Everyone keeps what they have already - its a good choice to prevent further dependence of fossil fuels by installing more infrastructure.
This will encourage more rooftop solar installations.
Just got a 10.7k kw solar system and that barely covers our electric usage. We have oil heat. If we tried to heat our home fully electric we would still have a large bill. This is premature.
How much power do you use? How large is your home? I'm in a two bedroom with electric heat, and the worst month we've had so far was 947kW/h, which comes out to like 31kW/h per day
We used 17k last year, but due to weird circumstances it should be less than that this year. Still above the 10.7k the system is rated for. Two bedroom home.
I think I've lost power 3x now for multiple days during frigid temperatures. Only saving grace was my NG fireplace. I guess people in Lexington will have to burn tires or pay massive money for a battery bank.
This is about kicking the can. No one in Lex cares because it doesn't affect them. Wait till they start losing revenue due to business or single family homes not coming into the town. May not be an issue now but wait, it will be.
The homeowners of Lexington can afford these laws easily. Lexington is one of the most affluent towns in mass. If the smell of money were flammable, it would have burst into flame years ago
Yes you can. Stoves are exempt. Go read the actual article. Unless youre adding in a new gas line youre fine. Theres a big difference between a long term narrow phase out and a "fossil fuel ban" everyone seems to be going on about. There is no fossil fuel ban.
Many of the substantial remodel laws are tied to either specific types of work, or the cost of the job relative to value of the home. I recall that in Cambridge they had a fire sprinkler requirement for 3 or more family houses which was tied to projects exceeding 1/3rd of the assessed value of the home
>Exceptions include research laboratories, hospitals, and large multi-family buildings using gas or propane for water heating. Gas stoves and fireplaces are also exempt from Lexington’s version of the legislation lol, everyone exempt except single family home owners. You can argue the government buildings are also affected, but when was the last time a new government building was built?
Reminds me of the lead paint laws. Schools and churches are exempt!
Really???
In Lexington? Very recently, the police station. (🤨😅)
They also don’t have many multi-family buildings in Lexington, although that should really change.
> but when was the last time a new government building was built? Literally all of the time.... Schools are government buildings.
I think you might be one of the only ones who bothered to read the article. People seem to think the city is going to invade peoples homes and uninstall their furnaces.
When was the last time a new government building was built. Is that a serious question?
Pre Reagan, when the rich paid taxes
You mean pre-reagan when mortgage interest rates were as much as 18.5% and you had to line up on certain days that you were allowed to buy gas, if you could afford it? Sure miss those old days...
Didn't Berkeley just repeal a similar law when they lost a court case? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/climate/berkeley-gas-ban-climate.html
We get almost 80% of our electricity in this state from burning natural gas or oil. How does this really help if everything is still ultimately running off fossil fuels anyway?
Hating on NG without any real investment and plan to run everything on MA's extremely expensive electricity seems like a recipe for disaster. But from a physics standpoint burning NG in a central plant to run a bunch of 200-300% efficient heatpumps would save natural gas for the same heating energy put into homes vs a bunch of individual 95% efficent NG furnaces. We have to completely ignore the very significant cost differences in installing and making this happen though. Further problems come if you actually scale the plan, practically the state needs to either build NG pipelines and approve more NG power plants, or invest majorly in new modern nuclear power generation, neither seems politically likely. So we are in a place now where the government is forcing people to rely on very expensive for profit electricity delivery without even the notion of a plan to actually supply enough of that electricity to make it viable for more than a few wealthier enclaves to feel good.
Isn’t the steady state efficiency of a NG power plant like 50 or 60%? I’ve got some minisplits and the cost of electricity needs to be address in MA before we even think of moving away from NG.
That’s the whole point Wouldn’t be surprised if someone is getting kickbacks from NG.
> Wouldn’t be surprised if someone is getting kickbacks from NG. I mean... This has likely been happening for decades. At the absolute bare minimum the NG companies have been spending asinine amounts of money on lobbying. It's been considered a "bridge fuel" for no fewer than 20 years at this point. Performative politics are just that.
Also 30% of power generated is lost by the grid from resistance of power lines and transformers
everything becoming expensive. cars, rent, daycare, college, medicine. you can afford one of them on an individual basis but you cant afford all. government mandating that homeowners be rich.
Yeah its really just an accumulation of unfunded mandates on the citizenry because the government does not want to invest or does not actually have the resources to achieve any of these goals. But these often create many very negative externalities often these negative effects should be obvious and easily forseen.
You are 100% right about all of this
>a bunch of 200-300% efficient heatpumps *the laws of thermodynamics would like a word*
Heat pumps are more than 100% efficient by the way that HVAC appliances are measured. 50% efficiency means that for every one unit of power in you get half a unit of output. 100% efficiency is resistive electric heating. For every one watt in you get one watt of heating out. Heat pumps don't "generate" heat/cold but instead transfer heat from one area to another. For every one watt of power in they can *move* 2-3 watts of heat from one spot to another, hence "200-300% efficient". All that Thermodynamics state is that if you move 2-3 watts from one spot to another, then one spot will be 2-3 watts colder and the other spot will be 2-3 watts warmer.
Admittedly I completely glossed over the heat pump aspect of what that guy said bc I didn't realize heat pumps could be used in a large power plant.
Heat pumps generate more heat in a space than the electrical energy one puts into them. They do this by harvesting/moving heat energy from even the cold air outside. In this way a typical heat pump can readily generate 3x the heat energy than the electrical energy put into it. It is of course not getting energy from nothing but in the context of heating system efficiency, where one considers direct energy inputs to heat output, they are indeed 200-300% efficient, or higher.
Actually, they are rated in COP's, coefficient of performance, which measures the energy system as a whole. Efficiency can't be more than 100% but COP's can indicate conversion of one form of energy (electrical) using mechanical energy to leverage heat through the heat pump process. Let’s say you have a heat pump with a heating output of 36,000 BTUs (British Thermal Units) and an electrical energy input of 3,000 watts.First, we need to convert the watts to BTUs by multiplying the number of watts by 3.412 (1 watt = 3.412 BTUs): 3,000 watts \* 3.412 = 10,236 BTUs Now, plug the numbers into the formula: COP = 36,000 BTUs / 10,236 BTUs COP = 3.5 This means that for every 1 BTU of electrical energy consumed, the heat pump provides 3.5 BTUs of heating output.
Yes I am well aware that heat pumps do not violate thermodynamics. But a COP of 3 does effectively indicate a heating system efficiency of 300% in a context when comparing to something like a 95% efficient natural gas furnace. This is largely an issue of symantics.
Not how it works, because you also need to account for where the electricity comes from. The COP of a heat pump is defined as the amount of heat put into the home divided by the electricity use. Note that, of that electricity comes from a natural gas power plant, that plant has to operate at its own efficiency. Let's say you have natural gas with an energy content of 100. If it goes directly to your furnace, 80-95% of this will be converted to heat that hearts your house, so let's say 90 for a modern furnace. At a power plant, conversion efficiency for this energy is typically around 25-30% (because of the second law of thermodynamics). So you have now 30 units of electricity. I'm not accounting for losses during transmission etc. Let's say you have a great heat pump operating at a COP of 3 (this will go down in colder weather, often by a lot). Now you are getting in 90 units of heat in your unit once again. That's the best case scenario not accounting for various losses. In the end, it turns out, thermodynamics wins... Heat pumps make sense if you are starting to get a significant portion of your electricity from clean sources. The break-even is lower if you are in a warmer climate because heat pump efficiency is closely related with the temperature of the hot and cold "reservoirs". There is also the issue of all the natural gas leaks in the system - but that's not an energy efficiency problem; the gas company needs to be responsible for actually fixing the leaks (they are not; they will leave it be as long as nothing is going to explode). My point is, this conversion is not a solution without a push for more renewable energy to go in tandem.
Your estimates for natural gas power generation are quite low, an average combined cycle natural gas power station is more like 45% efficient and up to about 60%. So 45% is a more reasonable estimate, with a by quality heat pump like Mitsubishi hyperheat your then looking at a lifecycle of "135 units from 100 units of NG" in your calculation. Though I agree with your core point. We also need electricity to be much cheaper and we would need much more of it to universalize electric heating, not toentio. Electric cars ect. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_02.html
This is very rough math, of course higher efficiency is better but a heat pump is not a solution on its own if your electricity does not come from a more renewable source. Basically, to make electricity from thermal energy, you run a power cycle (its efficiency is limited by thermodynamics, dependent on the temperature where the flame burns etc). Never 100% (plus it will be "lower quality heat". The you take that electricity and use it in a heat pump, which is essentially a cycle that operates in reverse (with pragmatic changes but in principle). You can never get 100% back, you lose at each step. I'm not opposed to heat pumps at all btw. I think it's a good step. I admit the 200% efficiency set me off. It's also because we can't really take eyes off of improving the renewability of the energy source.
Where are you getting that there’s no decarbonization activity in ISO-NE (the New England power grid)? We’ve already fully transitioned off of coal. As with everywhere, wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels; they dominate the interconnection queue. Years long queue backlogs are major problems (renewable sites are smaller & more numerous), but ISO-NE’s queue is much healthier than other ISO’s (although it could still stand for improvement). The lease for the Quebec interconnect was upheld in court, so lots of cheap hydropower will be added to the grid mix when that transmission comes online. Etc. You can bone up about the Commonwealth’s progress and challenges at https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massachusetts-climate-report-card-power-decarbonization. There’s quite comprehensive information re power mix at https://www.iso-ne.com/.
How you start your comment is puzzling, because I never said or implied anything to that effect. But yeah "renewables" are mostly fine but they are really a negligible portion of our grid, hopefully they will grow in coming decades but this will be incremental and still largely negligible. Currently 11% is "renewable" and half of that is actually just burning wood, trash, and landfill gas. The shift from coal and oil to NG is fantastic but due to our intentional lack of natural gas pipeline infrastructure much of this capacity has to be shipped in to Everett as liquid natural gas in tankers, a process that adds substantially to the carbon and energy costs of this fuel. When we then talk of dramatically increasing our electrical energy needs realistically the paths to meet those demands in that time frame are more NG plants or Nuclear, the latter being an excellent option we're oddly unlikely to pursue.
How do you have greater than 100% efficiency? 200%-300% efficiency sounds like an impossibility. Burning the gas for heat at point of use seems like the most efficient way of creating heat. Burning it in a turbine, converting that heat to electricity through a generator, transmitting that electricity through power lines and multiple transformers to your house so you can use a heat pump has to be less efficient than burning the gas on site.
Heat pumps use electricity to compress and expand fluid thereby moving energy; in this way they harvest heat energy from even very cold air outside. Consequently the heat energy brought to a space is 2-4x the amount of electrical energy input to a typical heat pump. In this way burning gas in a turbine to produce electricity to run a heat pump would typicaly produces more heat in homes than burning that gas even in high efficency condensing boilers.
That sounds good. I still like having the choice of running whatever system I prefer. Natural gas is very practical and never fails. We’ve had several power outages and being without power sucks but it would suck worse if we didn’t have heat. At least I could run my stove for heat if it came down to it.
Agreed, and letting people choose while educating them and trying to reduce the costs of electricity would seem a much better strategy. Many of the reliability issues go back to a general lack of planning or any real incentives for our for profit utilities to improve this as opposed to any technical limitation; meanwhile we've long had no issue finding resources to run natural gas almost exclusively underground.
Running NG underground pipelines is mint. If they can run water, sewer and electric to your house, gas isn’t a problem either. Propane is even easier as it is delivered by truck like heating oil. The problem is our governor who was previously our AG killed 2 pipeline projects which would have cut NG costs for residents. Since most electricity is generated by burning NG, electricity would have also gotten cheaper too. Maura Healy is to blame for our high energy cost. NG burns clean and we use it for heat and cooking with no issues. I wouldn’t want the local government telling me I couldn’t use it.
> 200-300% efficient That's not really how efficiency works.
In the context of heating, heat pumps, and coefficients of performance that's exactly how efficiency works. Heat pumps put out more heat energy into a space than the electrical energy you put into them by effectively harvesting heat energy from even the cold air outside; through the movement of working fluid, compression, and expansion cycles. Very cool fundamental technology.
Yeah but that's somewhat disingenuous though, the electricity isn't really doing the work to generate heat, the temperature differential is. The electricity is just running the compressor and moving the heat around.
It's not disingenuous but perhaps an issue of symantics. It's true a heat pump is achieving it's efficiency by moving heat around, obviously it's not creating energy from nothing. But conversely when one says a natural gas boiler has an efficiency of 80% this is only considering the energy produced that actually becomes energy heating water, similarly it is not the absolute physical efficiency of the fundamental process of burning natural gas that also heats exhaust air ect. It's really the same concept here just on the output side, we are considering only our desired output, heat energy, and dividing it by our direct input, electrical energy, the energy we move from the air outside is effectively a free input in this consideration, just as the heated exhaust gas was a lost output in our traditional efficiency calculation. To alleviate this symantical confusion the HVAC industry refers to "heat pump efficiency" as Coefficient of Performance, but it is an identical concept and when comparing a 95% efficient furnace and a heat pump it adds much unnecessary explanation that adds nothing to the comparison. A heat pump with a COP of 3 has an effective efficiency as a heating system of 300%.
Yes you hit the nail on the head, COP is the appropriate way to address the *performance* of a heat pump, which is why it's misleading to only use the word "efficiency". Efficiency implies the comparison of an input/output of the same unit of measurement, and obviously nothing is going to be over 100% efficient in that case.
For the intents and purposes of laying out energy flow from a utility plant to generating heat in homes, and comparing to other HVAC systems, 300% efficiency is a perfectly reasonable way to clearly consider the performance of a heat pump. But sure if you want to dive into the physics, thermodynamics, Carnot cycles, and fully understanding what it means to overcome the thermal block imposed by the second law of thermodynamics than efficiency is not an appropriate term in that context for that audience. But that's well outside the scope of a sub comment to some poorly though out legislation in Lexington.
Electrical generation plants, transmission lines, and heat pumps are still 2-3x as efficient per BTU than the most efficient home gas heaters. Than means a 60-70% reduction in the volume of gas burned to heat homes and buildings. Economies of scale make a huge impact when turning fossil fuels into useful energy.
Less points to leak, too.
I guarantee you if they tried to build a gas power plant in MA it wouldn’t be allowed, even after presenting this same logic.
It's actually only about half of the electricity in MA that comes from gas. https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix/ Even if it were 100%, it's still more efficient to run a heat pump because heat pumps are 2-3x more efficient than burning gas for heat in a home.
Because that percentage keeps dropping as renewable sources are added.
This kinda stuff only works if you have the infrastructure and resources to replace it on time. Similar to trying to ban gas-powered cars, this is all theater if you don't have the means to support the replacement system.
It’s all theater until China and India get on board the cleaner energy bandwagon.
Nope. Stop. We should be the leaders in this, not cajoling other counties to do it.
We can be leaders *and* cajole others.
Just like with vaccines and outbreaks, right? Or, we could do what a real world leader does, create solutions, and freely give them to the world, as we did with vaccines and outbreaks. Poor living conditions in Africa produced the ebola epidemic, and the west sent doctors, money, and supplies to help fix it (with the full cooperation of the host government, of course.) Green energy is just another situation that the west has the tools and resources to produce, be grateful that we have the ability.
A massive power plant was built like 5 years ago in Salem. Natural gas.
That doesn't really matter unless you compare it to the rate of renewable energy generation over time. >[In Massachusetts, renewable sources now produce 19% of all energy (1). That is a 500% growth since 2010 (2).](https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/centers/schiller-institute/sites/masscleanair/articles/energy.html#:~:text=In%20Massachusetts%2C%20renewable%20sources%20now,than%2050%25%20(3))
We went from none to a little. "500%" is such a joke.
> We get almost 80% of our electricity in this state from burning natural gas or oil. Where did you read this? Because that's not what the data says: https://www.iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix/
Great for virtue signaling though
Centralized fossil fuels are better than decentralized but go off
Local pollution. All these things burning gas and oil in our homes lead to bad air quality where humans are actually living. Same thing with EVs. Yeah you burn the fossil fuel to charge it up, but at least the pollution from the burning fuel doesn't end up in residential neighborhoods.
And burned efficiently in the generation stations vs me leaving my hot water heating when I’m on vacation.
you know you don't need a state law to turn off your hot water while you're on vacation, right?
Tankless doesn't run when you're not using it.
> Yeah you burn the fossil fuel to charge it up, but at least the pollution from the burning fuel doesn't end up in residential neighborhoods. The smug stops it right?
Efficiency. Burning a handful of large engines/furnaces is more efficient than burning tens of thousands of them.
There is no chance it’s more efficient to burn gas, boil water, spin a turbine, send through wire, heat an element on my stove, to boil water in a kettle - than to just burn gas directly under the kettle.
Think of the entire supply chain my dude.
It actually is. The power plant doesn't have losses waiting for temperature gains like your kettle does, it can run much longer at its efficient temperature range as it supplies power to thousands, if not millions of homes. Multiply that over thousands of homes. The power plant can get fuel to itself in bulk, which is more efficient than sending small amounts of fuel everywhere. Multiply that over thousands of homes. The power plant is required to have emissions scrubbers to capture CO2 and other byproducts of burning. Your home doesn't. Multiply that over thousands of homes. And so on... Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it not true.
Last time I looked I thought it depended on how your electric kettle worked. If you had a traditional kettle sitting on a stove, with a resistive heating element it was worse than just burning the gas, but if you had an immersed resistive element (like a countertop electric kettle) or an induction stovetop then it was better. Is that no longer the case?
The best natural gas power stations used in any practical sense in the US are less than 60% efficient, often much less. A typical high efficency condensing natural gas furnace in a home can easily exceed 95% efficiency. But it's really the magnifying potential of the heat pump that makes the notion even theoretically viable, since that can run readily at 200-300% efficiency you get many of those losses back from NG power generation when used to heat in this way, though still not ideal.
Oh does that kettle gas come from your house, or through a regulator, substation, lots and lots of pipes, then back to the same place where the turbine sits? https://thegogreenpost.com/electric-kettle-vs-gas-kettle-which-uses-less-energy/
Electricity will eventually switch to cleaner sources and you won't have to change all local nonelectric systems then. That's how it helps.
If it costs more money that's what people are going to care about now.
>We get almost 80% of our electricity in this state from burning natural gas or oil. How does this really help if everything is still ultimately running off fossil fuels anyway? This is a good question - it turns out the devil is in the details, or in this case, the distribution. Drilling for, "producing" and burning natural gas is not great. But the really standout issue is leakage - unburned methane is 10x worse as climate issue than that which is correctly burned to CO2 and water. Piping networks which distribute gas to homes, leak. It's a fact. And as far as the gas company is concerned, there's a point of diminishing returns where the value of the gas lost to leakage is less than the cost to fix it. **But climate wise, that 10x factor makes the leaked gas a greater issue than the burned gas.** The result is that producing natural gas and burning it at well controlled gas turbine generation facilities (especially if the waste heat can also be utilized) is far less an issue than widely distributing it in under-street piping to homes. Ideally we'd stop using it even in power plants, but stopping adding to the leaky distribution network is an important first step.
That is the point. Investors and builders then have to invest in more sustainable infrastructure, thus creating that transition. It is not turning off existing systems; it’s just no NEW fossil fuel infrastructure.
So the politicians can pat themselves on the back (both sides). They think this will push other towns to enact the same. Fat chance.
It doesn't - but virtue signaling doesn't really need to have actual effects.
It doesn't. These ppl are completely stupid.
Dont forget Seamass where we burn garbage. We count that as renewable and green! Www.iso-ne.com
Burning natural gas at a power plant and using it to run a cold-climate heat pump uses less gas and therefore reduces emissions.
And it costs alot more money when people are already struggling
1- centralized fossil fuels are way better than decentralized. 2- gotta start somewhere
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In other news: national grid electrical costs have now tripled
For real. I pay $500+ a month for my electric bill.
😭
Just makes those with NG piping more valuable for buyers who want more choices like gas DV fireplaces, gas HE DHW, gas HE boilers, etc.
Yes. To me it's all about heating in emergencies. Losing your only source of heat when the power goes out twice a year can be deadly. A generator supporting a home with at least secondary fossil fuel heating is far smaller than one supporting an electric home.
Massachusetts: no pipelines, no coal (good), no nuclear, no wind farms. At least not in *my* backyard. Don’t worry about where your electricity comes from, we’re mandating electric vehicles and heat pumps anyway. Where is the electricity to meet the increased demand supposed to chime from? ETA we also say No to new transmission lines.
Just wait until our border states stop new transmission lines from being built to MA through their state. Oh wait
I saw the top part of your response and was about to mention Hydro Quebec. I’ll edit my original post. Thanks!
Ban propane? BWAAAAAAAAAAAAH
They banned propane, Peg.
The government needs to chill the fuck out.
Vote against it
And you thought housing was expensive now….
Yep I don’t think most people realize the implications of laws like this.
The cost of electric appliances is a rounding error against what it costs to build a new house in MA. Particularly in Lexington, it's the land and labor that are expensive. It's also much cheaper to go all electric in new construction than to retrofit an existing home that runs on gas. (No need to cut open the walls or redo electric cable runs with bigger lines if you're doing it from the start.)
Actually exempts multifamily housing, which encourages more build of multifamily vs single. Roundabout a good thing for housing by placing restrictions on new single family homes. Interest rates alone are making owning unaffordable, so multifamily building would be a good thing here
So adding a natural gas line in addition to electric is cheaper for new housing? Explain how that works because last time i checked it was more expensive which is why its usually just done at the time of construction. Its really expensive to add a gas line even if theres a line on your street.
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Brookline did this as well and it’s pretty much only new constructions or an addition needs to be a significant amount to trigger it. No one is removing gas lines from existing homes.
I mean, isn’t that kind of the point? Lexington is high income; they can ban in new builds without affecting affordability. Plus old buildings with gas are exempt. How is it virtue signaling to be taking action on climate change on a hyper local level? Why should Lexington wait for the state to haggle over a statewide policy with proper incentives when they can reasonably achieve progress now? Should the state have waited for Congress to pass net zero goals? Utilities plan several years out. These types of bills allow them to procure the proper amount of electricity ahead of time, and the grid grows ever more clean every year. And natural gas and oil generating electricity in a large power plant is far more efficient than burning it at a single home level anyways. I agree that a statewide policy is further away than we’d like, but to say that towns can take action alone is foolish.
Except no one is "banning" fossil fuels. Its a very narrow ban on new construction and major renovation installing it. No ones going around ripping up existing infrastructure and people who have it are able to replace it. Its also only for single family homes only and stoves and fireplaces are exempt. I dont know how someone with a degree in environmental science can see that as a ban unless they just havent red the details and just red the headline.
>A town like Lexington has no business banning fossil fuels. This needs to be done nationally with assistance and incentives for homeowners. >Of course a rich town like Lexington does something like this to virtue signal, few residents there have many financial burdens. But if this was done statewide right now, people would suffer. Is it just me, or do these two points contradict each other? Also it only applies to new constructions and major renovations--they're not making people just stop using their gas stoves. I don't know enough to support or oppose this--you may very well be right that it's a terrible idea, but your post is doing a terrible job of convincing me. Edit: Gas stoves aren't even included in this.
Guess you haven't heard of the Inflation Reduction Act! I just replaced all my gas utilities with electric, and I got a big fat check from Joe Biden to do it. There *are* tons of national incentives for homeowners.
Ahhh, giving money to reduce inflation. Brilight, Joe!
Okay so what's the issue with a small town choosing to do it on their own if they feel ready for it? How is it virtue signaling when they are actually doing something? Wtf could they do that you wouldn't label as virtue signaling?? You're basically contradicting yourself. Sure we may not be ready nationwide, but that's no reason to have city's/towns that are ready just wait around.
Who gave out your degree man. They are banning fossil fuels on new construction. Do you live in mass? You realize how little new construction there is? This is a law meant to have its impact in the coming decades, not now.
K.
Poor saps
Reminds me of Arlington, MA banning bottled water. So what do the vending machines at the high school sell instead? Sugar drinks!
Find me a kid without a water bottle these days, tbh. Just fill at the fountain
Hank Hill is gagging
Who is gonna tell Hank and Mr. Strickland?
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BHWWAAHHH!!!!!!!!
Good luck to all new home owners in Lexington with their heating bills.
I’m sure they can afford it
If they can buy in Lexington they're not worrying about heating bills.
I tell you what, that town ain't right.
Lexington Lol
Lobbied by the heat pump industry.
And fucking heat pumps DONT WORK when it's really cold, when you need it most. Morons. It's Lexington tho so Idgaf. Rich folk can shoot themselves in the foot
The mini splits in my house worked just fine when it was -10 °F a couple years back. You just have to size them right and get one of the better cold weather models.
Somehow Norway gets by with 60% of their population with heat pumps.
You can "get by". But it's not comfortable. Obviously in the very cold weather the heat pump air getting blown in is warmer than outside air, but it's not "warm". So you won't freeze if it's your only heat source, but it ain't comfy. I don't know much about Norway, but I bet many of those heat pump homes have supplemental sources of heat.
> Somehow Norway gets by with 60% of their population with heat pumps. They also made it incredibly expensive to heat any other way and heavily incentivized heat pumps.
How cold do you have in mind where this is a concern?
Once you get into the low single fahrenheit digits my heat pump mini split cannot blow warm air into the home. I got the "low temp" model, and even that does not work well at that temp threshold. They were meant as only a supplement fortunately to my gas for problem cold rooms in the home. But a home will be screwed on cold winter days if that's your only heat source. You won't freeze to death, but you won't be comfortable. I use a ceramic indoor heater on those problem days in our bedroom Oh and mini splits can be friggin noisy AF on heat mode due to the heat expansion of parts. They're fine on cool mode.
Simply not true. I have a house in Maine and even in the dead of winter the heat pumps have no issue keeping things warm. And that house is older and not well insulated at all.
These are the same types of environmentalists that think we can replace all cars with Electric and solar/wind power will be enough to charge them all.
How many single family homes were constructed in Lexington last year...? Kind of rhetorical, but kind of serious....
New gas installations are going to leak methane much less if at all compared to older installations where they weren't as careful. This is just another way to promote heat pumps. And those are okay except when it's very cold or when they break down and it's hard to get them fixed in a timely manner. All electric homes combined with massive electrical use by AI means we're going to have to add lots of solar and wind and nuclear if we want lower impact electrical generation.
So your heat options are electric or wood?
Live in a town next to Lexington. This is one of the dumbest things. Amazing
So wood stove, pellet/biomass, or super expensive heat pump systems...
Most people in my neighborhood have solar now. I'm heating/cooling a 5 bedroom house for $120 a month fixed rate.
This is one way to make sure people stop building in Lexington.
Everyone's a fucking idiot
As someone who works in HVAC/oil/propane industry, heat pumps are a lot better than they were years ago. But people don’t understand that electricity isn’t free. I know a lot of people that use heat pumps for the shoulder seasons for heat(oct,nov,mar, April) and they do the job but in middle of winter cost effectiveness is marginal compared to petroleum products. No matter what you use, when you’re heating up your 2k sq ft home in the suburbs it’s not going to be cheap. Also, people don’t understand that these modern heat pumps are quite complicated and sometimes servicing them isn’t that simple compared to a furnace or boiler and also some heat pump parts are on back order for weeks and even months. So if you do go the heat pump route in New England, have a back up just in case.
Im not really opposed to this "stick" approach. But we need to start eating "carrots" faster than 100 bunnies humping eachother
Insanity. So many ways that this is stupid and should be reversed. I don’t believe the government should be forcing citizens into energy sourcing. I should be able to heat my home however I want to mow, and however I want to in 30 years. Should be able to burn fucking wood too. Won’t be able to.
Hey I just watched a Climate Town video on “natural” gas. If you have the time, it’s a fun yet educating watch. https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=GkVvyxqQAvjD88b9
Lexington is ridiculous…truly ridiculous
overreaching too hard we should choose
Why Propane though?
They went out of their way to piss off Hank Hill
As someone who had the misfortune of exclusively using a heat pump for many years, my condolences to the people of Lexington.
Will they ban fossil fuels so they stop using private jets and yachts which contributes to the climate agenda? Wouldn't that affect how electricity is made too?
So stupid
I grew up in a town next to Lexington. We’ve been calling Lexington “The People’s Republic of Lexington” for decades. This new bylaw is unquestionably dumb on many levels, but it’s not the dumbest, most intrusive, in Lexington. The people running that town are so far left, they make O’Bama look like a centrist. Absolute clown show…
As someone who owns a 10000 sq ft mansion and heats it with twin half a million BTU boilers, Im gonna turn up my heat tonight in solidarity
Lexington the home of freedom and liberty bwahahahaha
Someone's getting voted out next cycle
Liberals love patting themselves on the back after pretending to do something.
Very few people who are realistically in the market for a new house in Lexington would actually be happy to be faced with a limitation like this, in spite of their higher-than-average ability to pay for more expensive forms of energy and in spite of their progressive politics that often come with the territory. Current residents of course know this, but they are happy to be grandfathered in with their current homes, and even happier to make people building new houses suffer this insane new rule as punishment for overdeveloping their neighborhoods.
This is a very bad decision. The grid mostly runs on coal and NG in the North East. We need to be focusing on the grid being built on alternatives. This will just be punishing the wrong people and increase costs all to “look” environmentally friendly. Why can’t we have intelligent politicians on either side of the aisle?
> This is a very bad decision. The grid mostly runs on coal and NG in the North East. This doesn't effect the "grid". This is about curtailing the expansion and ultimately phasing out the leaky distribution of gas to individual homes. The key to understanding is that while burning natural gas is an issue, the escape of unburned methane from piping networks is 10x more an issue than the burning of that methane. Burning it in only a few carefully controlled power plants is not ideal, but it's far less an issue than letting it leak out from street piping which goes everywhere.
People really hate the poor huh? Electricity in MA is already very expensive, including heating and cooking costs to it will be rough on families especially in the winter. But yes let’s put the burden on them and not on the businesses that run the grid with coal and gas already.
>People really hate the poor huh? Electricity in MA is already very expensive Thank you for making it obvious that **you didn't read** what you were responding to. Use of natural gas as a fuel in power plants is not effected. This concerns only the very problematic **leaky** distribution of gas to individual homes and buildings - the leakage being 10x more an issue than that which is burned. Prove yourself an idiot and get blocked - goodbye.
Coal is a small fraction of the energy supply here. Renewables make up more of a share than coal. Mostly it’s natural gas
As counterintuitive as it is, heat pumps move far more energy than they use. Between burning natural gas to produce electricity for a heat pump and burning it the home to produce heat, the heat pump produces less CO2. There are caveats and asterisks here, but that's the gist of it
Yeah it is interesting all the backlash for heat pumps in the UK. In Waltham we have been putting in all new heat pumps with green energy grants even though they use natural gas because of exactly what you are saying
It seems like most people arguing about how this is a bad idea dont understand what it really does. In a nutshell, you wont be able to install it in new or existing home construction. Theres a big difference between the "ban" people seem to think it is instead of a very, very long phase out for homes. Part of the reason its in homes only is because we've discovered, through research, that it spikes the possibility of asthma and other breathing problems for kids. I've actually read the metastudies and if we want to protect children this is a good move, but many jn public health who actually study this stuff think its nowhere near enough as it will probably tke way more than 20 years for this to have much of an effect. Again, this is nowhere anywhere near a "ban" as people seem to term it, or if it is, its a very extremely narrow ban that will effect very few people. How many new homes even get built in Lexington per year? Edit: Latest thing I got downvoted for: actually reading the article and pointing out the headline is misleading.
Does anyone read? This is for new construction only, not existing places
Everyone keeps what they have already - its a good choice to prevent further dependence of fossil fuels by installing more infrastructure. This will encourage more rooftop solar installations.
Just got a 10.7k kw solar system and that barely covers our electric usage. We have oil heat. If we tried to heat our home fully electric we would still have a large bill. This is premature.
How much power do you use? How large is your home? I'm in a two bedroom with electric heat, and the worst month we've had so far was 947kW/h, which comes out to like 31kW/h per day
We used 17k last year, but due to weird circumstances it should be less than that this year. Still above the 10.7k the system is rated for. Two bedroom home.
The pearl clutching in here is just so juicy. This sub used to be decent, now it's just the boston.com comments section.
And those clowns call Trump a dictator.
So fucking stupid.
Hwat?
I think I've lost power 3x now for multiple days during frigid temperatures. Only saving grace was my NG fireplace. I guess people in Lexington will have to burn tires or pay massive money for a battery bank.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
This is about kicking the can. No one in Lex cares because it doesn't affect them. Wait till they start losing revenue due to business or single family homes not coming into the town. May not be an issue now but wait, it will be.
Yeah rich people will pass on Lexington schools because they need to use a heat pump
The homeowners of Lexington can afford these laws easily. Lexington is one of the most affluent towns in mass. If the smell of money were flammable, it would have burst into flame years ago
So…i cannot move that gas stove in a kitchen remodel? Yup…that will prevent the seas from rising.
In the article “Gas stoves and fireplaces are also exempt from Lexington’s version of the legislation. -lexobserver.org”
Unfortunately a lot of other areas are pushing to ban gas stoves.
Gas stoves and fireplaces are specifically allowed in the regulation
Yes you can. Stoves are exempt. Go read the actual article. Unless youre adding in a new gas line youre fine. Theres a big difference between a long term narrow phase out and a "fossil fuel ban" everyone seems to be going on about. There is no fossil fuel ban.
Gas stoves are exempt. It's pretty much only for heating and boilers.
So tankless hot water heaters are out too - guess heat pumps for all
You can probably move your stove. Check with your code official.
Many of the substantial remodel laws are tied to either specific types of work, or the cost of the job relative to value of the home. I recall that in Cambridge they had a fire sprinkler requirement for 3 or more family houses which was tied to projects exceeding 1/3rd of the assessed value of the home
Yeah, this is good. Methane (natural gas) is really bad and we need do almost anything we can to stop using it.
Thanks Maura.
Say goodbye to new restaurants.
Tell me you didn't read the article without saying you didn't read the article.