Goodbye gas furnaces? Why electrification
is the future of home heating
Canadian Broadcasting Centre [Toronto, Canada],
by
Emily Ching
Original Article
Posted By: NorthernDog,
1/20/2020 9:43:37 AM
It's a stereotype, but it's true — Canada's winters are cold. And many of us stay toasty by burning fossil fuels such as natural gas in our furnaces or the boilers that feed our radiators. In an effort to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and meet targets to reduce global warming, the U.K. has proposed banning fossil fuel-based heating in new homes by 2025. Cities in the states of California, Washington and Massachusetts are also trying to phase out natural gas. If your home is hooked up to a district heating system, where a utility supplies heat directly, you may
Reply 1 - Posted by:
qr4j 1/20/2020 9:50:39 AM (No. 293249)
Where do they think electricity comes from? They don't like nuclear. And we can't have hydro everywhere. Wind and solar are not sufficient. This is ridiculous. Seriously ridiculous.
53 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
HPmatt 1/20/2020 9:53:24 AM (No. 293252)
Love our natgas furnace and hot water heaters. Also remodeling kitchen to finally get natgas range. Why heat our house with coal-powered electricity when clean burning natgas is 1/2 the price of electricity? All those electric cars are also charging up their heavy-metal batteries with coal-powered electricity.
40 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
jacksin5 1/20/2020 9:54:10 AM (No. 293254)
History of heating in the U.S. Wood to coal, Coal to Oil, Oil to Electric, (Nuclear Power). Electric to Oil, Oil to Natural Gas, Natural Gas to Solar and Windmills?
All of these expensive changeovers were burdens placed on the homeowner by Government. In other words, Lobbyists bribe lawmakers, we pay the bill.
28 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Clinger 1/20/2020 9:56:30 AM (No. 293262)
Basically they want to trade clean natural gas for not so clean coal. Positively brilliant.
29 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
planetgeo 1/20/2020 9:57:06 AM (No. 293264)
Well sure. If you want a monthly electric bill that's larger than your mortgage/rent, go for it, eh?
34 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
john56 1/20/2020 9:59:33 AM (No. 293268)
Sorry. I got all electric. Bill isn't bad, but that's because I live in Texas and electric rates are low.
But nothing beats natural gas for heat, hot water and a stove top.
32 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
BarryNo 1/20/2020 10:09:03 AM (No. 293283)
Absolutely insane!!
Especially the way things have been going in California. Electricity is VERY subject to failures and in a cold winter, that can mean a freezing house, broken water lines and thousands in repairs. If you have gas, you can usually run the thing if the electricity goes off and at least keep things bearable - or at least it used to - the new furnaces are designed to shut down if the electricity is off, so you need a generator as well to maintain the house current.
15 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
chumley 1/20/2020 10:13:56 AM (No. 293288)
Of course. It makes perfect sense. Natural gas is so abundant and cheap nowadays it doesn't put a financial burden on most people. Cant have that, can we?
29 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
DeplorableVet 1/20/2020 10:29:45 AM (No. 293297)
Because solar power works so well during the cold, dark Canadian winters.
19 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
bamboozle 1/20/2020 10:31:06 AM (No. 293298)
I agree with the insanity #8 but you cannot run today's modern high efficiency gas furnace without electric power to run the blower that forces air through the combustion chamber and electricity to run the computerized controls. Event that not withstanding, without the big blower to distribute warm air to the house, what good would it do? I suppose you could run your gas stove/oven if you can do it without killing yourself? These people are nuts.
5 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
mc squared 1/20/2020 10:33:07 AM (No. 293301)
In 1981 we bought a house up north with electric heat. No gas lines in the streets and we found that the developer had a deal with the power company to hold rates at a reasonable level for homes with electric, but only for the first buyer. When we, as second owners, bought it it reverted to regular rates. We almost went bankrupt running around from room to room turning thermostats up and down and closing doors. (It had baseboard resistance heat in each room). After some years, gas was installed in the street and we converted. Heating bills dropped by about 2/3.
25 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
NancyD 1/20/2020 10:35:26 AM (No. 293303)
Our daughter had a 1 bedroom apartment at college, her oven, furnace, hot water heater were all electric. Her electric bill during the winter months would average $450, whereas our big home with gas furnace, oven and water heater electric bill averaged $175 Electric is not efficient and expensive. I'm tired of environmentalist dictating policy when they are NOT informed and make things up as they go. It's BS
23 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
gorzabozo 1/20/2020 10:48:06 AM (No. 293313)
Thanks Canada, California, Washington and Massachusetts for helping to keep nat gas prices low by reducing demand. We heat our home with nat gas as well as having gas water heaters and a gas stove. When the elec goes out in cold weather we fire-up our wood-burning fireplace and nat gas oven. The draft from the fireplace brings in more than enough fresh air to counter any carbon monoxide emitted by the oven. That's been proven by our battery-powered CO detectors. The detectors look like your typical smoke detector that mounts on the ceiling and I recommend getting a couple of these if one heats their home in this manner.
11 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
nordlander 1/20/2020 10:53:00 AM (No. 293318)
You only need a small generator to run a gas furnace. When I lived in WA state, the Honda EU1000i generator I used to keep the batteries charged in my trailer did a fine job powering the furnace's blower and control circuits during power outages, keeping the whole house warm. Plus it had enough power left over to run a 42" TV and a couple of high efficiency lights. When it wasn't running tne furnace I plugged it into the refrigerator so the food wouldn't spoil. The Honda weighed 29 lbs and used about 1/2 gallon of gas every 6-8 hours.
To do the same in an all-electric house you'd need a generator 10-12 times as powerful, with correspondingly higher weight and fuel consumption.
9 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
columba 1/20/2020 11:21:32 AM (No. 293359)
We chose gas heating because it was cheaper than electricity. When the electricity fail, the gas remains available.
11 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
David Key 1/20/2020 12:16:06 PM (No. 293390)
This is so much horse pucky. There is no real evidence of either warming due to CO2 as any kind of long term trend. Every prediction of disaster put out by the chicken littles has come to nought. The east coast was supposed to be underwater by this year, for every disappearing glacier there is another one that is growing. This is all about forcing govt control on the masses to enable the elites to maintain their power base and to enrich them, since they of course have the money to pimp the "cure" industries to the ignorant masses.
10 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
DVC 1/20/2020 12:45:04 PM (No. 293408)
Beyond stupid.
Gas, burned in a modern furnace, delivers 97% of the energy in the gas to the home, and the energy costs of pumping the gas in pipelines is extremely small.
As an alternative, gas, burned in a central generating plant, produces 33% of the energy in the gas as electrical energy. If this is converted at a 100% efficiency in the home, you have still selected an alternative that throws away 2/3 of the heat value in the natural gas.
In warm enough climates (southern USA, most days) a more expensive heat pump system can be used which moves the heat in the outside air into the home (the reverse of air conditioning) and can gain back that massive efficiency loss. But in northern areas, there is not enough heat in the outside air to make this feasible, the huge size of the units needed means their cost is totally prohibitive. So, heat pump systems installed in marginal areas fall back on direct electric heat on really cold days - and the electric bills skyrocket. The friends who used to have heat pumps in KC area pulled the plug on the electric heat and used wood heat until they could get a propane system installed.
Natural gas is the most efficient and effective way to provide heat to a home, and equally efficient for cooking.
As usual, the econazis are totally wrong on this. TOTALLY. The question is whether they are just stupid, or are actually TRYING to make life more miserable for all of us?
7 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
cactus 1/20/2020 12:54:28 PM (No. 293417)
So glad natural gas arrived in my hometown in the ‘50’s. Prior to that, my family burned wood. Other neighbors burned oil or coal. We no longer had to spend summer weekends bringing truckloads of wood home - cutting, splitting, loading into the pickup, bringing it home, unloading, piling in the yard, transferring to the basement. Our neighbors cancelled coal and oil deliveries. Gas furnaces really made a big difference in all our lives.
5 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
Daisymay 1/20/2020 1:44:27 PM (No. 293451)
Good grief! We need to run these Greenies out on a Rail! When I was growing up, we heated with Coal (I might add our house was always warm in the Illinois winters). Eventually we converted to Gas and it was Heaven (no more shoveling Coal into the Furnace). Since then (I'm now 78) I've only experienced not having Gas Heat one time. We bought a home in Tennessee and it had a Heat Pump. Wow! When winter rolled around, we froze! It felt like a cold wind blowing through our house! We couldn't wait to get out of that house. When we moved to FL we were offered a Heat Pump or Gas heat when choosing our new home. No Contest! We will always have Gas Heat! It's the best!
4 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
Starboard_side 1/20/2020 1:45:42 PM (No. 293453)
The amazing part, the powers that be in government, don't implement these things FIRST.
And, #11, they aren't interested in maintaining the modern economy, except for themselves.
4 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
Jethro bo 1/20/2020 1:47:59 PM (No. 293455)
Boy those all electric houses sure get cold when the electricity is out. And how would one charge the car?
6 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
doctorfixit 1/20/2020 1:52:49 PM (No. 293461)
It takes 3X as much natural gas to create the electricity to heat the home than it does bu burning the clean fuel in the home;s furnace.
Three times the "greenhouse gases", morons.
3 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
franq 1/20/2020 2:39:30 PM (No. 293487)
Face it. If it's cheap, good for the majority of citizens, and makes sense, liberals are against it.
8 people like this.
Reply 24 - Posted by:
earlybird 1/20/2020 3:12:03 PM (No. 293501)
Have had gas heat since eons ago. Prefer it. Also prefer gas range. Have in one house; electric in the other. Prefer gas.
Restaurants use gas cooktops. It will be interesting to see what happens to them. I predict “norhing”….
3 people like this.
Reply 25 - Posted by:
JimBob 1/20/2020 8:54:41 PM (No. 293710)
My preference is all electric in my home.
I had some less-than-pleasant experiences with gas furnaces many years ago, and I don't like the smell that I find a gas cookstove adds to a home. Plus, I do not like the (admittedly slight, but real) danger of fire or explosion. That's just me.
For those that do like gas, have at it!
I live in the deep South, and the temperature rarely goes below freezing.
I have a high-efficiency heat pump that keeps the house warm in the winter, and of course is also the air conditioner in hot/humid weather.
We have an induction cooktop, where ALL the energy goes into the skillet or pot, and no waste heat into the home (which, especially in the summer, then has to be removed by the air conditioner/heat pump.)
Direct 'resistance' heating is of course rather expensive, and in a cold climate would really make that electric meter hum!
I do have a wood-fired fireplace as a backup in case the electricity fails in cold weather. Plus, a wood fire in the fireplace is a nice thing on a cold evening.
The postings about gas efficiency are correct. Modern gas furnaces extract 97-98% of the available energy from burning the gas and direct it into the home. A standard 'Rankin cycle' steam-powered electrical power plant has a theoretical maximum thermal efficiency of 50%, so (unless they are 'stacking' thermal cycles, using the 'discard' heat from a hotter system as the heat source for a cooler system), they are throwing away HALF of the energy from burning the gas, right off the bat. And that's the theoretical BEST that one can do. Real-life plant efficiency is, I think, around 40-45%, with the remaining 55-60% of the heat energy being discarded.
Natural gas can be used for so many things- direct heating of homes and buildings, heating water, cooking, drying clothes, powering cars and other vehicles.... not to mention all the 'chemical' uses for natural gas, using it to make other chemicals. Burning natural gas to generate electricity is a stupid waste of the natural gas.
I think generating electricity is the one place that we SHOULD burn COAL, as we have a lot of it, and we should use it where it can best be used and the emissions-reduction equipment is practical to install and operate....and save the gas for all the other uses where coal cannot be used.
Yes, burning coal does produce more CO-2. CO-2 is plant food, and the "man-made global cooling" (oops) "warming" (oops) "climate change" (oops) .... here we go...."Anthropogenic Global Climate Disruption".... is the largest SCAM ever perpetrated on the populations of the civilized nations.
3 people like this.
Reply 26 - Posted by:
msjena 1/20/2020 9:15:08 PM (No. 293714)
Natural gas is the best for heating, but don’t get it because of possible power outages. Electricity is still needed to run the furnace. Get a generator or be ready to use the fireplace if the electricity goes out.
1 person likes this.
Reply 27 - Posted by:
Peeps 1/20/2020 10:40:39 PM (No. 293744)
Agree with #26. All electric home, zonal (heat the rooms you want, if at all, to the temperature you want) radiant ceiling heat, 100% efficient according to the PUD, 4 bedroom, 2600 sq ft home in the PNW, electric bills $95 a month. Induction stove top cooks like gas but safer. But in remodeling, decided to put in a heat pump so that I could have air conditioning for the *maybe* two weeks out of the year that I might need it and for resale value. Plus not a lot of electricians out there anymore who service electric ceiling heat. It's like a heated floor, never breaks. Electric bill went up! Of course, we do have hydro power out here so electric is the way to go. Plus I'm scared of gas explosions! That's just me, appreciate the other posters' comments.
0 people like this.
Reply 28 - Posted by:
Sunhan65 1/20/2020 11:50:13 PM (No. 293768)
The article is from the CBC, which stands for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC does operate a Canadian Broadcasting Centre, but it's a place, not a news service.
0 people like this.
Below, you will find ...
Most Recent Articles posted by "NorthernDog"
and
Most Active Articles (last 48 hours)
Comments:
Article is from Canada but environuts everywhere are out to take away your natural gas appliances. It's for the children - of course.