The more infrastructure they lay and the more customers they connect, the harder to shut them down. The more bail-worthy they become.
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
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Yeah they're trying hard to achieve the "too big to kill" status, like shamu.
Shamu would have succumbed to a .308 to the brain pan. There ain't shit that is "to big to be killed", just those unwilling to do the killing.
Because we live in Canada and our design day heating energy requirement is typically far greater than our design day cooling energy requirement. Add in the fact that best pump efficiency falls way off at design day heating (to half or less of design day cooling) and you end up with equipment that may be able to do heating and cooling but is way oversized for cooling, so lots of people opt to save capital (and potentially maintenance) money by relying on gas heat for the coldest days.
Because water heating with heat pumps is currently garbage on the residential scale... the heat pump capacity on residential water heaters is quit low, which is fine for keeping the tank warm but not for dealing with a half decent draw, so they all include full electric capacity which means you need the service size and associated operating costs to go along with it. Commercial heat pump water heating isn't much better, it may get better once CO2 or propane take off as a refrigerant here.
Because more and more buildings are putting in emergency generators, which require either natural gas, propane or fuel oil. One of those is significantly easisr to install and maintain than the other two.
Because water heating with heat pumps is currently garbage on the residential scale.
Also because we're already stressing electric infrastructure with what we use now, and few plans to add capacity in any reasonable amount to deal with the massive increase in population, plus electric cars, AC during heat waves etc let alone home heating.
Gas is efficient for heating, and there's plenty of other stuff we can and need to look at before we replace that.
Also because we’re already stressing electric infrastructure with what we use now
This is propaganda.
On the hottest day last week Ontario hyrdo demand was ~24000MW, last night it went as low as 12000MW. There is room to almost double the baseload in Ontario, with actually smart appliances and controls (not Smart^TM^ shit) a ton of fossil fuel heating loads could be replaced with electric without needing any grid level upgrades.
The boat salesman says you need a boat.
YOU pay for the infrastructure, YOU pay for the maintenance, YOU pay for the gas. Why would they stop now?
"Growth at any cost" is a great motto for corporations, and cancer.
Because number has to go up. Always. Forever. Unending.
That's great for climate goals, but can someone tell me how we're supposed to heat our homes? Electricity?
Um, yes? Heat pump until -15C, baseboards for the relatively fewer days that go below that. Plus good insulation.
In Quebec we have cheap hydroelectric of course, but I mean, between nuclear power, renewables and hydro, that's basically how.
Synthetic methane.
Because money.
Annnnnd this is exactly why we need the carbon tax.
Natural gas infrastructure and heating could be transitioned to hydrogen or biogas.
Most hydrogen is produced from natural gas so would not really be a replacement for the foreseeable future. Gas infrastructure is not designed for transporting hydrogen so leaks would be significant. Hydrogen can also penetrate into steel piping and cause it to crack and deteriorate more rapidly.
Biogas, sure if there were enough production available.
No reason we can't produce hydrogen from solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal.
Add carbon dioxide to the hydrogen, and you get methane that you can transport through existing gas pipelines without the issues of hydrogen
A perfect Electrolysis reaction takes about 39kwh to produce 1kg of hydrogen that if burned at 100% efficiency would yield 33kwh of power. More realistically it takes 50-60kwh to produce 1kg that is burned to produce ~25kwh of usable energy.
I'm not too sure about converting hydrogen to methane but that will have energy overhead as well, and then you have to deal with the fact that 6% of natural gas production today is leaked into the air, which both further hurts the efficiency of synthesizing it and also has a significant climate impact.
I think it willl almost always be cheaper to just provide electricity directly except in cases where energy density is far more important than efficiency, which is not the case for stationary homes.
It doesn't have a negative climate impact if the source is renewables. That's the point. Its basically free gas.
Solar energy doesn't run at night. Wind doesn't always run. Hydro doesn't work during droughts.
This is a battery that solvers these issues.
If you take co2 and convert it to methane and then release that methane you are increasing the impact of that co2 by 6x.
Something like 90% of hydrogen is produced from methane and coal, so there clearly are reasons. Most likely cost effectiveness.
Add carbon dioxide to the hydrogen, and you get methane that you can transport through existing gas pipelines
Well sure, since those pipes are already transporting methane. I dont think requiring each home to have its own methane pyrolysis infrastructure is particularly practical or efficient either.
Because its a waste product, but once we make digging up fossil fuels illegal, that will change. Then we can repurposed the infrastructure in ways that are not harmful
I have no idea what to make of this vacuous comment, so unless you have something meaningful and specific to say I think I am done with this conversation. Good Day.
The problem is, they aren't going anywhere. They'll just funnel money to politicians to stop any attempt to stop them.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In 2022, buildings accounted for 13 per cent of the country's emissions, making them the third biggest source of greenhouse gases by sector, after oil and gas and transportation.
It was overseen by provincial and territorial regulators whose key goal was to ensure safe and reliable energy at fair rates for customers.
It aimed to incentivize developers "to choose the most cost-effective, energy-efficient choice," but the board was overruled by the Ontario government, so the original plan will go ahead.
Kate Harland, lead author of the Canadian Climate Institute report, said utility regulators' mandates should be changed to include climate targets, as has been done in the U.K. And they could change "obligation to serve rules" in order to consider alternative technologies, such as electrification, energy efficiency measures or thermal networks to provide heating to customers.
It is the perfect method to allow gas utilities to transition and keep or increase their annual profit, while at the same time reducing the customer's energy bills, according to Schulman.
Harland says current incentives alone won't drive down customer demand for gas quickly enough and energy policies need to change.
The original article contains 1,091 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
We can make synthetic methane with renewable energy though. I don't have a problem with building such infrastructure becsuse it can be used with renewable energy
Unless the round trip efficiency of synthesized methane (synthesis, transportation and re-capture) is better than solar/hydro/nuke electricity it doesn't make sense build our own hydrocarbons. There are also the cumulative health effects of burning methane in your house and that it is serious greenhouse gas.
Its a battery. It makes more sense than electricity because its extremely energy dense, can be transported long distances far more efficiently than electricity, and can be stored indefinitely in low-tech gas tanks instead of electrical batteries
Methane has to be compressed for both transportation in pipes and storage in tanks, a very energy expensive process. Or it can be chilled down and condensed to a liquid for bulk transportation in ships, also a very energy expensive process. Every single joint and valve in the distribution network has the potential to leak, and many of them do, the same goes for storage tanks. Also pressure regulators (like the one on the side of your house) have to vent to bring down the pressure when the ~~network~~ house pressure is too high.
Natural gas distribution networks are extremely leaky.
Also pressure regulators (like the one on the side of your house) have to vent to bring down the pressure when the network is too high.
No. They have to vent if your household pressure is too high. If, for example, cold gas was admitted into your lines, and that gas heated up, the pressure in your lines would increase. The regulator can't push that gas back into the high pressure main, so the regulator would have to bleed off the excess pressure.
Derp, that IS right, will correct.