The Seattle City Council will consider a ban on natural gas for newly constructed homes and buildings, favoring the use of electricity for heating and cooking.
Councilmember Mike O’Brien plans to introduce legislation this week that would prohibit natural-gas piping systems in new structures, starting next summer. The ban would take effect for permitting on July 1, 2020, according to a draft of the legislation.
— The Seattle Times
If successfully implemented, the ban would position Seattle alongside Berkeley, San Jose, San Francisco as American cities that have recently banned new natural gas infrastructure.
A 2016 report estimates that roughly one-quarter of Seattle's total greenhouse gas emissions come from natural gas use in buildings.
17 Comments
is this really a thing people are voting for? Maybe it’s the « gas » part of natural gas they are focused on. Have you not noticed the word natural? Should this not get all the green washing hippies all hot and heavy?
Just keep taxing that power grid. Nothing can go wrong there.
The souces of energy for the US electrical grid are Natural Gas 35.1%, Coal 27.4%, Nuclear 19.3%, Hydro 7%, Wind 6%, and Solar 1.6%. If the city of Seattle wanted to reduce air pollution overall they would be encouraging the use of natural gas over electricity.
This actually makes a little more sense for Seattle as their energy is overwhelmingly hydro, and not fossil fuel based.
(source)
Seattle City Light was also the "first electric utility in the nation to become greenhouse gas neutral" in 2005 (also stated in the Seattle Times article). So shifting heating and appliances from gas to electric will probably actually reduce emissions.
So 1% of energy production is natural gas but yet they claim it's responsible for 25% of their emissions?
You're confusing energy production with building use (heating and appliances primarily)
I probably am. I was reading this while in transit this morning.
If the electricity is so cheap why would you need to prohibit natural gas? Virtue signaling? In any event another source said only half of the Seattle City Light energy came from its own hydro power and the rest from the Bonneville power system (which itself has a hyrdo component). Also, the environmental extremists want to remove all dams from the Columbia and Snake rivers, no?
I'm not sure where your question about cheap energy came from. I'm not seeing anything in the article bring up the cost of energy as a factor (except to tax home-heating oil). Maybe it should be? For your other point about the source of SCL's power ... cite your source please. It's hard to respond to your point without understanding what you mean by it. Are you saying that the Bonneville power component isn't represented in the graph above? SCL claims it is and it only makes up a "small portion." They do state that half of their customers electrical needs are produced by dams on the Skagit and Pend Oreille rivers. They also own dams on other rivers, but none of them seem to be on the Snake and Columbia Rivers. I couldn't find anything quickly that describes the portion of Bonneville power that SCL purchases that comes from dams on the Snake and Columbia. Perhaps someone else wants to dig into it more than I do.
If electricity is so cheap in Seattle there is no need to ban natural gas as no one would chose it to begin with. So why make a show of banning it? Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency from which Seattle Light gets half its power, operates 11 dams on the Columbia River, 10 on the Snake River, and 10 on the Williamette and Rogue Rivers. Some 'green' environmentalists have a problem with that.
Is your argument that the free market should simply direct people to the cheapest available source of energy to heat their homes, regardless of the environmental impact? Is the free market ready to pick up the tab for the externalities?
Again, cite your sources please. You claim that SCL gets half its power from Bonneville power ... where does this come from?
Some 'green' environmentalists also have a problem with hydraulic fracturing ... so, what's your point?
The 1/2 comes from the SCL website. The point is all this 'green' electricity, which is promoted by SCL as also being inexpensive, is viewed as not so green by a lot of environmentalists. Doesn't seem too difficult to grasp
link? quote?
'Cause I found this on the SCL website which seems to disagree with you, "City Light purchases a small portion of power from BPA and from the wholesale market that does not come from renewable resources." (emphasis mine)
Upon more careful reading I can see that the "small portion" in that statement is meant to refer to the amount of energy from non-renewables, not necessarily the amount of total energy purchased from BPA.
The only indication that I could see on SCL's website that 1/2 the power comes from BPA is the following: "Seattle City Light hydroelectric projects on the Skagit and Pend Oreille Rivers provide about half of the power customers need. The remainder comes from a mix of power sources, including long-term contracts with the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and other renewable sources." Which is not really what you make it out to be.
About half from SCL's dams on those two rivers, plus their dams on other rivers, plus the sources of other energy they don't purchase from BPA, equals the final amount they purchase from BPA ... which is? Less than about half ... whatever that ends up being.
Well if you have no problem with Bonneville damming up four rivers with 31 hydroelectric dams, and the city of Seattle doing likewise with their own dams on other rivers so Seattle can be pretend to be 'geen' so be it. It is a question as to which would do the least environmental damage, all these dams or natural gas, or a mix of the two.
just a reminder that natural gas is essentially a waste byproduct of oil production. what isn't piped off and used is just burned on site or released directly into the air (thank Trump for reversing EPA policy on this!). The methane in natural gas is 24x as potent as CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
this is another policy that makes sense on a small scale but ultimately contributes to a bigger problem.
The above linked article notes the natural gas wasted in Africa's oil production would be sufficient to power the entire continent! Instead it's just burned on site. So long as America produces oil, it will need to dispose of the gas. Heating homes is a better way to do it than this:
Pretending or not, it seems like they have an opportunity to make a step in the right direction here. If I understand correctly, they are looking at ways they can reduce the GHG emissions from their buildings. With a carbon neutral energy grid, it makes sense to take building functions that are burning natural gas and releasing GHG, and transition them to electric from the carbon neutral grid. This make less sense for those cities in CA whose energy grid is using natural gas as the largest source of energy production (almost 50%).
As for the dams, yes, they aren't the greatest for the environment. Environmentalists may want them removed. However, they are in place and using the energy they produce really isn't adding to the environmental negatives already in place. Burning fossil fuels instead would be taking carbon out of the ground and releasing it to the atmosphere where it can contribute to global warming (not to mention the negatives of fracking). So unless there is another proposal on the table that can reduce the GHG emissions and get rid of the dams, the city can pick their poison ... live with the dams already there, or ignore one of the sources of GHG emissions they are trying to reduce.
If it were me, I'd pick the one I'm already living with and try to reduce the future emissions. It seems petty to criticize a step in the right direction because of some dams that are already built and in current use just because it might also be a step in the right direction to remove them. Especially since removing them would definitely require a different source of energy production for the city (gotta power all the Teslas the people working at Amazon are driving around). So in removing the dams, should they build more wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas, coal, or some other type of power plant? What do the environmentalists say about each of those sources (toxic waste, GHG emissions, heavy metals, mining practices, disruption to natural ecosystems, etc.)? Run a life-cycle cost benefit analysis looking at the removal of the dams and the building of whatever type of power generation you want to replace it, compare that to what is already in place, and let me know what you come up with (I'm not being snarky with this, I'd be genuinely curious to see this).
P.s. Feel free to shoot me a email when SCL or BPA start proposing more dam projects, and I'll help come up with dam protesting slogans. Also feel free to shoot me a email when the dam protesters need some help coming up with dam slogans to push for the dams' removal.
on reflection what i really hate about this proposal isn't the well-intenioned aim, it's that it creates an entitlement. owners of existing homes have access to nat gas and get to keep it. new arrivals to the city - no. so this grandfathers in something useful and creates a privileged group of homeowners who can keep burning gas and cooking food.
the most obvious impact will be on commercial space though. there is a measurable disadvantage for restaurants that don't have piped gas. it will mean owners of existing restaurant space get the gift of a monopoly on top tier restaurant space.
also reading the article note that 25% of homes in seattle use fuel oil for heating. this proposal adds a tax but doesn't prohibit that. so expect more oil, pumped out in texas, delivered by truck, and burned on site.
it's just a wholly foolish approach to dealing with a legitimate problem.
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