In America’s Finest Magical Thinking we covered the 2022 San Diego Climate Action Plan (CrAP) which places demands on “decarbonizing the built environment.” The so-called solution to rescue San Diegans from certain doom of a carbonized built environment is to replace natural gas appliances with all-electric ones. This means furnaces, water heaters, clothing dryers, and stoves.
The CrAP demands that by 2030, 45% of existing buildings be converted and the 90% by 2035. Starting in 2023, all new construction will be required to be all-electric. By 2030, 50% of the city’s own buildings must be converted and by 2035 the remaining 50%.
The politicians, bureaucrats, and activists who came up with this, showed they had zero idea just how a “bold” or “ambitious” plan could actually be achieved. Some are so bonkers, it’s worth repeating some of the quotes again here just to review how out of touch with reality they are:
“It will require an enormous effort on the part of the City and its citizens and should remain a major focus of implementation planning going forward,” the city’s Office of the Independent Budget Analyst said in a report released in July. But the office did not give a dollar estimate.
The city is “really trying to hit the ground running,” Wilde said, to develop an analysis of all the buildings within San Diego’s city limits. Officials will work with the construction industry, technical experts and residents to help categorize the building stock and the inventory analysis will help inform the implementation plan’s initial financial projections.
….
“Off the top of my head, I’m not sure if there’s anyone who’s done it yet,” said Randy Wilde, senior policy adviser in the office of Mayor Todd Gloria, who authored the Climate Action Plan update with his staff and put it before the city council.
…
So far, there are few financial specifics. Details are expected to be fleshed out in late February when an implementation plan will be released, in advance of Gloria’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2024.
“No one should be afraid that a mandate is around the corner,” Wilde said. “This is going to be a thoughtfully crafted and very inclusive process.”
….
“Yes, retrofitting is going to involve costs,” Elo-Rivera [San Diego City Council President] said, and he looks forward to seeing the details of the implementation plan. “I think trying to estimate the cost between now and then would be a bit of a fool’s errand. Since the time we passed (the update), the federal government is beginning to take significant climate action that would probably significantly reduce the cost to the city and to San Diegans for making those changes.”
Yesterday, the Noble Heroes at the CA Air Resources Board (CARB) voted in favor of a statewide ban of some natural gas appliances by the end of the decade. Some meaning gas dryers and gas stoves are left alone - for now.
For this story we turn to an NPR piece entitled California plans to phase out new gas heaters by 2030.
Emphasis mine:
In its ongoing effort to slash ozone pollution, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) voted Thursday to ban the sale of new gas furnaces and water heaters beginning in 2030. Homes will be required to install zero-emissions alternatives, like electric heaters.
The vote is designed to meet EPA regulations limiting ozone in the atmosphere to 70 parts per billion. Much of California still exceeds that limit.
…
"This will reduce the building sector's carbon footprint and improve public health. We also appreciate the commitment to equity-centered engagement and community input in all states of the process," said Daniel Barad, senior policy advocate at Sierra Club California.
Buildings account for about 5% of the state's nitrogen-oxide pollution, better known as a key ingredient in California's notorious smog. CARB says nearly 90% of those emissions are from space and water heaters. The rest comes from things like cooking and drying clothes.
According to a report from the policy research group SPUR, California homes and buildings generate four times as much nitrogen oxide pollution as all of the state's gas power plants combined. They also generate about two-thirds as much nitrogen oxide as all the passenger cars on the state's roads.
If we’re to interpret NPR’s reporting as correct and accurate the ban has more to do with ozone and nitrogen oxide emissions than carbon reduction.
The NPR piece, not surprisingly, neglects to state where the other 95% of CA’s nitrogen-oxide pollution originates. On top of that, the figure that homes and buildings in the state generate four times more of the compound than gas power plants or two-thirds as much as all passenger cars does not provide ample context. They also don’t cite anything about this measure from CARB themselves either.
No press release, no link to the actual CARB ruling.
Nothing.
NPR leaves us guessing but we presume the 95% of CA’s nitrogen oxide emissions comes from agriculture. But we’ve already seen what happened earlier this summer when bureaucrats in the Netherlands attempted to crack down on that.
Nitrogen oxide emissions from natural gas power stations are heavily regulated and easily controlled as they are point sources so its of little surprise they are no longer much of an issue, although it would be interesting to see, with the last few years of electrical grid crises in CA how much extra of all pollutants these plants have emitted since being allowed (in part thanks to Gov. Newsom) to run at “overtime” to make up for the lack of generation capacity created by the swift move to unreliable weather-dependent energy dilute renewables. You won’t see the Corporate Press, especially in CA where most of them brown-nose Dear Leader Hair Gel nor any NPR reporter covering that.
Ever since catalytic converters became standard on passenger cars, provided thieves don’t steal them for their precious platinum, their emissions of nitrogen oxides decreased significantly too. In most of the developed world where passenger cars have been mandated to be equipped with such control measures along with the use of ultra-low sulfur diesel, smog has become far less of a public health issue.
The NPR journalist simply pulled part of their copy almost directly from the SPUR report too.
Lazy.
SPUR, by the way, stands for San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, and this report isn’t just their work. The Sierra Club and Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) were co-authors as well. (The NPR piece leaves that out too even though their affiliations are on the cover page of the pdf they cite.) In other words, this is a document created by activist groups who benefit from “greening’ with all-electric appliances. The Sierra Club and RMI are both on record with notorious anti-nuclear positions.
The SPUR/SC/RMI report also neglects to provide the context on where the other sources of nitrogen oxide originate from. This report is really more of a call for activism, in this case for the government overlords to “do something.” As typical with these groups, especially in CA, there tends to be a nice revolving door between bureaucrats in these regulatory bodies, state politicians, and activist groups.
CA may not be tropical but if climate change keep heating the region perhaps it can be both metaphorically and literally a banana republic.
CARB at least, to their credit, are far more realistic and pragmatic than, say the San Diego in their CAP. Instead of mandating these appliances be replaced in nearly all buildings by a certain date regardless of remaining life, they instead mandate the appliances be replaced if/when they die after a certain date.
Either case, California faces a number of issues with this - will their grid be able to handle it? No.
Especially as the same activist/bureaucrat class seek to make the grid even more unreliable? Hell no.
Will property owners even be able to source a heat pump when they need one? Probably not.
Given the supply chain issues plaguing many items, especially home goods, the verdict doesn’t look good.
Consider CA’s role model, Germany, who’ve been facing a great deal of uncertainty over the upcoming winter. Eugyppius, who happens to live in California’s overseas energy role model, reports the rush for Germans to install heat pumps before this upcoming winter. He links to an article originally in German.
Select excerpts below translated to English:
Despite all the euphoria, one problem overshadows everything else: the power supply. Heat pumps require electricity, and at the same time more and more e-cars are being connected to the grid. "In the fall, the lights will all go out for us," says Krüger. And yet the annoyingly long delivery times could possibly also slow down a blackout . At least that's what Achim Richter from the plumbing and heating company of the same name in Herrsching is hoping for.
With oil and gas prices soaring, consumers are looking for alternatives. If you can afford it, convert. If you don't, run to the hardware store and get electric heaters, says Krüger. "We're all running around like we're being controlled." And everything needs electricity, but the grid isn't designed for it. "We will not be able to do it. The power grid will collapse. The blackout is sure to come.”
It is a gloomy picture that the managing director of the Starnberg company describes. He feels misinformed by politicians: "For 30 years we have been trying to dig cables into the ground for a reasonable Internet. Suddenly, the energy transition is to be completed by autumn. That's just not possible." “The network there is already insufficient for a heat pump. It couldn't even be operated."
Many cities currently have bans on natural gas appliances for new construction, San Diego (presumably) plans to carry out their absurd fantasy, California as a state is then facing at a bare minimum a slow replacement of these appliances. Chances are California will eventually embrace a more radical stance anyways - especially so long as the green elitists maintain their hold on the state’s politics. And because saving the planet involves a great deal of virtue signaling, other states will follow in the footsteps somewhere in between the state of California or the more radical plan of San Diego. This will all create an unprecedented demand on all-electric appliances while demand for them is also set to increase outside the US. In the short term, this will at least free up even more natural gas to save CA’s grid from rotating blackout. So there’s at least that.
Bureaucrats, politicians, and activists tend to come from the “I don’t know where things come from or how stuff works crowd,” peppered with luxury beliefs on how they feel the world should work. Their worldview is re-enforced by so-called sense makers at Corporate Press outlets such as NPR. They are also insulated the most when certain things do hit the fan.
But it’s everyday people who suffer the most.
Californians, at least, will have their Dear Leader to set an example.
With Californians paying 21cents/kwh off-peak and 54 cents/kwh peak (4-9pm) no wonder they want to ban natural gas services to homes and buildings, forcing you to use their expensive electricity for heat & hot water. And prevent grid defection.
At those prices it would be cheaper to run a liquid cooled CHP NG generator/batteries/solar PV with heat and hot water cogeneration. With the CHP generator you don't need big batteries like you need for an off-grid solar. 10kwh would be enough not 30kwh as you need to replace an avg US home electricity supply with solar PV. And a 3kw solar array instead of a 10kw. Curious why NG CHP generators optimized for battery charging are not readily available and mass produced at the cost of a home gas furnace. Something stinks there. Or even a natural gas fuel cell, you would only need ~1.5kwe size. Larger buildings can use Bloom box NG CHP fuel cells. Or are they banned in California already.
So end-of-story. They can't compete in a free market so their answer is to ban the competition. Socialism or Monopoly Capitalism? Likely a combo of both, called "Stakeholders", the New World Order.
It’s silly to think the government can change the weather. The politicians are out of their minds. San Diego is peak Clown World.