Berkeley becomes first US city to ban natural gas in new homes

Re:Berkeley becomes first US city to ban natural gas in new ... by fooker on Thursday July 18, 2019 @04:01PM (#20473411)

It makes sense as a long term move because now you have a single point of change to switch to renewables. Suppose there is an unprecedented improvement in solar efficiency or power storage tech in 5-10 years or a nuclear power plant gets built. Then you cut natural gas usage to zero at once, which would have been impossible if all the houses still depended on it.

You can use the same argument for electric vehicles.

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Re:Berkeley becomes first US city to ban natural gas in new ... by drewcon on Thursday July 18, 2019 @04:27PM (#20473632)

Sort of?

We don't use electric vehicles for heat, so they are sort of fuel agnostic when it comes to where the electricity is coming from; we burn fossil fuels to make heat or electricity.

The future proofing argument makes some sense for California. Coming from the Northeast heat is a lot more important, I'll do a new HE Gas Boiler for 12k in a single family this year, converting from oil...save me probably 2k a year. If that were electric heat I'd be paying 400% more every year which would be insane.

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/household-heating-costs#co...

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Re:Berkeley becomes first US city to ban natural gas in new ... by Fjolsvith on Friday July 19, 2019 @09:13AM (#20478334)

Agreed. I used to live in Alaska, and when my wife and I bought our first home there, the furnace was broke and we couldn't afford to replace it right away. The electric baseboard heaters cost us $900 to run just for that January!

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Re:Berkeley becomes first US city to ban natural gas in new ... by fooker on Friday July 19, 2019 @12:54AM (#20476272)

And that's exactly why this is being done in California, isn't it?

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