Editor,
The Bay Area Air Quality board plans to ban the sale of gas hot water heaters and gas furnaces by 2027 for homeowners does not make much sense when we have 200 natural gas fired power plants in California, and PG&E has one under construction.
Power plants would have to burn more gas to supply the extra electricity needed for all the electric appliances. The power grid can’t even handle peak demand now, with flex alerts and brownouts. Power outages have become more frequent the past few years, with gas appliances at least I have hot water and can cook on the stove-top. Then there is the cost to upgrade one’s electrical service panel and get the house wired to plug in the electrical appliances that draw way more current than the electrical service from PG&E can supply from the power pole. So that needs to be upgraded also. Whole neighborhoods will need to have power lines upgraded to handle the increased load.
More current through the wires also increases the EMF to a greater distance. That opens up the chance for increased cancer rates for people living close to the power lines. At my home, the power lines are right over my backyard. Then there is the shortage of electricians to do all the upgrading needed. I think that the district should start with the gas-fired power plants first before they force homeowners to do anything.
Paul Petterson
Daly City
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(5) comments
We have to stop burning fossil fuels. We have no choice. Natural gas is massively polluting, and needs to go.
Hey dc00 - could you be more vague please? How is natural gas massively polluting?
The fallacy of an unelected Bay Area board deciding to phase out gas heaters, furnaces and appliance in 7 years is that there is no type of always on green energy that can replace the energy from natural gas that supplies 47% of our electricity every year. Solar and wind can’t be stored and batteries are way too unaffordable and use toxic materials. There is no realistic plan for expanding the grid or how much it will cost rate payers and the state whose budget gets deeper in the red every year.
Thanks for your letter, Mr. Petterson. As long as these gas-fired power plants are not in their back yards, all-electric proponents of “green” energy don’t care how carbon-intensive their electrical power is generated from. Their virtue signaling would fall flat if they had to acknowledge that the majority of their electricity comes from fossil fuels. Meanwhile, I’d suggest folks continue suing any local and state officials pushing this idiotic ban on gas appliances. They can point towards the recent overturning of Berkeley’s ban on gas stoves as support.
Thank you Paul - we need many more readers like you to push back on the hasty, unbalanced gas ban approach pushed by the BAAQMD and some City Councils. It is as if we have nothing else to worry about but an elusive attempt to solve the climate issue if there is even one. How about traffic, inflation, crime, and housing? Those are difficult so our political class chooses to find something else to do.
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