by Ellen Cardone Banks, Conservation Chair
At the NYS Climate Action Council scoping hearing in Buffalo, April 27, 2022, I started my comment with this: We have fires in our homes. It’s time to start putting them out.
Paleontologists suggest that taming fire is what changed our early ancestors into modern humans. Being able to cook led to changes in metabolism that preserved energy for a wider range of activities adaptive to the African savannah environment. Fire kept us warm, scared predators away, and let us stay up late talking about the questions we still ask: Why are we here? Where are we going? A million years may have passed before these speaking, symbolizing, sometimes-cooperating early humans evolved into the modern humans we presume to call homo sapiens (“wise people”.)
We have fires in our homes. Most are in metal boxes so we don’t think about them that way until something explodes. Furnaces, boilers, water heaters, clothes dryers, and stoves. When I was very young, our house was heated with coal. It was a big event to watch it roll from a truck down a chute to the basement. My father shoveled it into the furnace every day and then shoveled out the ashes--that’s why my parents called garbage cans “ash cans.” Later we had an oil furnace, which was smelly and a financial burden, as a season’s worth, like coal, had to be purchased at once. Parts of our state still rely on oil heat. Finally, gas heat became more widely available, and it has been promoted as an improvement, with less visible pollution, but it’s still combustion, releasing climate-damaging and toxic products of combustion. Many of our rural neighbors still have the burden of propane with prices as volatile as the gas itself.
It’s time to move on. Our climate crisis is increasingly dire. Western states are burning. A third of the greenhouse gas emissions in our state are from fire in buildings. Fire is making our planet and our people sick: New York State leads the nation in respiratory disease traced to fossil fuel emissions. Childhood asthma robs children of school days and outdoor play and creates work/child care stress for parents. Adult respiratory conditions increase the risk of serious illness and death from COVID-19. We have solutions—the technology is here.
The cost of implementing the Climate Leadership and Community Protection is billions less than the cost of business as usual. The scoping plan proposes three pathways, a concession to the presence of fossil fuel executives and other representatives of the status quo on the Climate Action Council. Of the three, the third pathway in the scoping plan is the one the Sierra Club and our allies in New York Renews prefer, and it would go a long way toward the goals New York State law requires, but we can do better. For example, it stops short of ending gas infrastructure in new buildings or phasing out gas-burning heating systems and appliances. The period for written comments on the scoping plan has been extended to July 1, 2022. scopingplan@nyserda.nygov.
The State Legislature’s session ended without passing the All Electric Buildings bill that would stop gas infrastructure in new buildings and eventually, over 20 years, phase out gas in existing buildings, replacing gas-burning devices as they age out with electric equipment. No one will be coming to confiscate your furnace! The corporations that mine, transport and supply gas have been flooding the public with misinformation about the costs of transition to electrification, but actual cost analyses show that construction of gas-free homes is less expensive and the operating costs of geothermal and heat pumps are lower than for fuel-burning heat.
New York Public Interest Group (NYPIRG) reported a study by the New Buildings Institute and National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) that found new all-electric single-family homes in New York State will be $7,500 to $8,200 less expensive to construct than fossil-heated homes. Also, all-electric new homes reduce total energy consumption by 34%. Avoiding the cost of installing fossil fuel infrastructure such as gas and oil lines provides substantial savings and avoids the instability of gas prices. The study was based on upstate New York’s climate and real estate market. Buildings with geothermal heating and cooling have long-term benefits of low operating costs, as do cold-climate heat pumps. Both have the advantage of providing air conditioning as well as heating, more efficiently than conventional air conditioning, an important feature as our summers become warmer. Some of the scare tactics used by the gas industry compare the cost of gas heat with antiquated electric resistance space heaters, instead of the correct comparison with contemporary heat pump technology, which is widely used in cold-climate countries such as Norway, where 60% of households have heat pumps. New York City has already enacted Local Law 97, requiring phased-in 40% to 80% emissions reduction by 2030 in large buildings that will apply to 60% of the city’s buildings. https://www.urbangreencouncil.org.
The Atlantic Chapter will continue, along with our 200+ Renewable Heat Now partner organizations, to push for the All Electric Buildings bill in the next legislative session. It’s up to us all to correct the false narratives of the fossil fuel and construction industry and to inform the public of the health and climate benefits of building electrification. For our health and the health of the planet, it’s time to put out the fires!