Climate Change

[WMD]

Great info here on the heat pumps.

We have gas heat, which I’m not going to change right now, but the gas water heater is coming due.

I’ve been lead to believe that I should get an electric heat pump water heater. It would be in the conditioned space. Anyone have good info on that front? We are in IECC zone 4c I think and have pretty cheap electricity.

We switched out a gas water heater for a Rheem heat pump heater and couldn't be happier. It uses very little energy and refills quickly. We can control it with an app, which is useful when everyone wants to shower at the same time as we switch from heat pump mode to high demand mode.

Bonus - in the summer it pumps some cool air into our house and helps keep it cool. We haven't really noticed it making the house cold in the winter.

The one downside is that it is noisy. Not a problem if not in a main part of the house, but ours is in a utility/recycling closet off the dining room and we hear it. If we are having dinner we just use the app to pause it while we eat.

[uglymoney]

So can I easily pair a newer heat pump/ac with my natural gas furnace?

I ask because my ac is nearing the end of its service life. It gets cold af here in winter and hotter than a pepper sprout in the summer. Geothermal heat pumps are expensive but necessary if you don't have gas back up. Our house is built on blasted limestone so I'm pretty sure vertical geothermal is not an option (though maybe horizontal into the hill behind our house).

Seems like a hybrid system would be worth looking at ie the ac/heat pump plus existing nat gas furnace.

Sent from my SM-G991U1 using Tapatalk

[ex-powderbroker]

Another 2c on heat pumps. I got one a few months ago because quebec will write you a check for ten percent to get one installed. Ours wasn’t cheap at 4600 but it served a wide range of temperatures efficiently (supposedly), maybe down to ten or so.

during our current heat wave (and hottest august in record surpassing 2019 and 18) it has made the house way more livable. like, without one i am not sure what we would have done.

the bills have gone down but we won’t really have an apples to apples comparison until next spring. Electric is already the cheapest in North America but they want to ship more hydro elec to the states for real money.

i don’t think we will exactly recoup the investment soon but it was worth it as a creature comfort in a house with no AC previously.

the only downside is that while it cools and heats about 1k sq ft, that doesn’t circulate too well into the bedrooms.

[uglymoney]

My furnace almost never runs if it is above 40 with solar gain 2×6 walls and R60 attic.

I have 3 new Marvin windows to put in as well which will also help if/when I get them in.

Seems like the payback would be forever or never. But I do like the idea of burning wind (Iowa is almost 60 percent wind now https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.the...eport/%3famp=1) instead of gas.

Taking a look at the list of cold air heat pumps supplied above. Appears Carrier has some options.

[AirheadD8]

So can I easily pair a newer heat pump/ac with my natural gas furnace?

I ask because my ac is nearing the end of its service life. It gets cold af here in winter and hotter than a pepper sprout in the summer. Geothermal heat pumps are expensive but necessary if you don't have gas back up. Our house is built on blasted limestone so I'm pretty sure vertical geothermal is not an option (though maybe horizontal into the hill behind our house).

Seems like a hybrid system would be worth looking at ie the ac/heat pump plus existing nat gas furnace.

Sent from my SM-G991U1 using Tapatalk

Yes , Always good to have options if your furnace goes out as well. You just have to prevent both units from running together in heat mode . The refrigerant coil is downstream of the furnace, hot air blowing across the coil while the heat pump is heating can stress the unit . Your installer should know how to wire it properly .

I would avoid heat pump water heaters , while in the Summer it helps cool your house but in winter it works your heating system more . Any kind of service call can blow what savings you enjoyed . If you get 10yrs out of a water heater you're doing well . Recycling a heat pump water heater requires removing refrigerant before disposal .

[k2skier112]

Some DJ was spouting off yesterday about how much cleaner gas vehicles are running these days and EV are worse for the environment because of the batteries...creation and disposal. Horseshit, right?

sort of, mostly...if you're power grid is burning coal, yes an EV is worse. if your grid is cleaner, no. but mining lithium isn't clean by any means and battery disposal will be a hudge problem when the majority of vehicles become electric, but it will be more of a ground water issue than co2

https://www.livescience.com/electric...vironment.html

[altasnob]

Natural gas monthly charge normally includes some kind of flat hook up fee. This gives people an incentive to have multiple appliances running on natural gas, and a disincentive to start switching appliances to electric.

Might not have a choice much longer as lots of cities have banned natural gas in new construction and requiring everything to be electric.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...-construction/

[adrenalated]

sort of, mostly...if you're power grid is burning coal, yes an EV is worse. if your grid is cleaner, no. but mining lithium isn't clean by any means and battery disposal will be a hudge problem when the majority of vehicles become electric, but it will be more of a ground water issue than co2

https://www.livescience.com/electric...vironment.html

Good summary, but I'll add that there are not that that many places in the US anymore that are powered primarily by coal. And ain't nobody building new coal plants these days
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-h...es-electricity
I clicked through every state, and here are the states where coal is the largest source of power: Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
In most of them, gas (or some other form) is a very close second and the overall grid is likely clean enough that EVs have the overall advantage over ICE vehicles. If you're in WY or WV though, your electricity sucks.

Battery disposal is IMO the biggest problem right at the moment, but one that I expect will be solved sooner than later as there are a lot of smart people working on it.

[shaft]

I would avoid heat pump water heaters , while in the Summer it helps cool your house but in winter it works your heating system more . Any kind of service call can blow what savings you enjoyed . If you get 10yrs out of a water heater you're doing well . Recycling a heat pump water heater requires removing refrigerant before disposal .

Curious - rather than arguing - what's your proposed non-fossil-fuel alternative? Electric resistance, tank-type? Even given the additional heating demand in the winter from a heat pump water heater in conditioned space, it would still be 2-3x less expensive to run than the electric resistance unit. Talking $75/mo vs. $30/mo. I'm fine with anything that avoids fossil fuel use, just a significant efficiency difference.

[Ireallyliketoski2]

My golf course better be green when I drive there in my 14 mpg Sprinter van.

With a Protect Our Winters sticker.

[AirheadD8]

I have a geo thermal unit which when running pre heats the 60 gallon indirect water prior to going into my oil fired water heater. The only reason I use oil is my power goes out quite often and I can run my oil boiler off a 5kw generator. I seriously doubt fossil fuels will every go away but am not reluctant to go to other sources. Since going Geo I went from around 1,000 gallons annually to 300 .

Water heater longevity in my area is not good ,10yrs or less . Water treatment is key but they wear out quickly . The recovery capacity is not nearly the same as a tank type electric so spacing out use is a concern.

The energy has to come from somewhere to heat the water .....Winter operation is a shell game . Summer all good Winter not so much , you still have to heat the space that the water heater is in . There are a lot of moving parts to go wrong as well. More materials go into the construction ,electronics, fans , plastic and the compressor has refrigerant and oil.

[WMD]

sort of, mostly...if you're power grid is burning coal, yes an EV is worse. if your grid is cleaner, no. but mining lithium isn't clean by any means and battery disposal will be a hudge problem when the majority of vehicles become electric, but it will be more of a ground water issue than co2

https://www.livescience.com/electric...vironment.html

The data in that article is from 2014, and more recent analyses find that EV's are better even on coal based grids:

The study methodology is innovative and distinguished from other life-cycle analyses’ in additional important ways. It considers lifetime average carbon intensity of fuel and electricity mixes, and accounts for changes in the carbon intensity over vehicle lifetime given present energy policies. It also looks at real-world usage rather than relying on official test values to estimate fuel and electricity consumption; this is especially important in assessing GHG emissions of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). It uses the most recent data on industrial- scale battery production and considers regional supply chains, which results in significantly lower estimates of GHG emissions from battery production than other studies have found. And it factors in the near-term global warming potential of methane leakage in natural gas and natural gas-derived hydrogen pathways.

“Even for India and China, which are still heavily reliant on coal power, the life-cycle benefits of BEVs are present today,” said Peter Mock, ICCT’s managing director for Europe. Pointing to the importance of the findings to the European Union’s recently proposed changes to its passenger car CO2 emission regulation, he added, “The results highlight the importance of grid decarbonization alongside vehicle electrification. The life-cycle GHG performance of electric cars will improve as grids decarbonize, and regulations that promote electrification are crucial to capturing the future benefits of renewable energy.”

https://theicct.org/sites/default/fi...PR-jul2021.pdf

[WMD]

In case anyone is wondering, yes climate change is making hurricanes stronger:

Evidence continues to mount that human-induced climate change is causing hurricanes to grow stronger and more destructive. Hurricanes are producing heavier rain, their storm surges are riding atop higher sea levels, and in many cases they are lingering longer over land, causing increased flooding and infrastructure destruction.

Facts for Any Story

• The five costliest U.S. Earth-system disasters (including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, fires, and all kinds of extreme weather, adjusted for inflation) have all been hurricanes, and all five have occurred within the past 15 years: Harvey (2017), Katrina (2005), Sandy (2012), Irma (2017), and Maria (2017).12
• Hurricanes get their energy from ocean heat; the warmer the water is, the stronger a hurricane can get. More than 90% of the excess heat trapped in the climate system due to human-caused global warming has gone into the oceans, providing the added energy driving recent hurricanes’ extreme wind intensities and the increased evaporation that has resulted in associated torrential rainfall.3
• Globally, the last few decades have seen a growing proportion of strong hurricanes and a corresponding shrinking proportion of weak ones. Specifically, from 1975 to 2010, the proportion of Category 4 or 5 hurricanes (the highest wind speeds) increased by 25-30 percent for every 1 degree Celsius increase in global temperature due to human causes, resulting in a near doubling of the proportion of those most intense hurricanes.4
• Both heavy rain and storm surge—water pushed ashore by heavy winds—contribute to flooding, which causes the vast majority of hurricane-related deaths and financial losses. The amount of rain falling in recent hurricanes has increased due to climate change, including in Harvey (by 20 to 38 percent),56 Katrina, Irma, and Maria. 7 Hurricanes are also producing higher storm surges due to sea level rise.8
• Climate-change-related perturbations in atmospheric winds like the jet stream appear to be contributing to a trend in which hurricanes are moving more slowly over the United States9 (slowing by 17% over the past century),10 and are increasingly likely to “stall” near the coast, potentially leading to catastrophic local rainfall and flooding. 1112
• There has been a significant increase in how quickly hurricanes intensify in the Atlantic basin in recent decades, an expected symptom of global warming.13 Hurricanes that intensify rapidly are difficult to forecast accurately and prepare for, especially when this occurs close to the coast, and cause a disproportionate amount of human and financial losses.14
• Globally, hurricanes are reaching their maximum intensities further from the tropics, shifting toward temperate, heavily populated coastal regions that have not historically experienced them. Northern Hemisphere hurricane peak intensities have shifted northward by 100 miles in the past 30 years.15

https://www.sciline.org/climate/hurricanes/

[shaft]

Tahoe or other fire-risk mags, how much have you spent on defensible space? Would be useful for me to make as a comparison to the cost of electrification.

[old goat]

About a million dollars in sweat equity, zero in cash. But it doesn't matter a lot what I do on my 50x100 ft lot, with all the neighbors with 5 ft setbacks and lots of untreated lots and land.
We're about to vote on a $179/yr parcel tax to beef up community wide prevention, including defensible space. So if it passes--that's what I'll be spending.
What does electrification have to do with it?

1/3 of Americans experienced a weather disaster this year.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/clima...hurricane-ida/

[mcski]

Can I electrify my defensible space against bears?

[jonesy]

With a Protect Our Winters sticker.

I know your right.

[shaft]

About a million dollars in sweat equity, zero in cash. But it doesn't matter a lot what I do on my 50x100 ft lot, with all the neighbors with 5 ft setbacks and lots of untreated lots and land.
We're about to vote on a $179/yr parcel tax to beef up community wide prevention, including defensible space. So if it passes--that's what I'll be spending.
What does electrification have to do with it?

What does electrification have to do with it?

Thanks for the response! All solid comments.

It's for a more tangible point of comparison, rooted locally.

We usually talk in dollar per metric ton of carbon emissions. That can be dollars per metric ton avoided, or dollars we need to spend in the future per metric ton emitted. $0-250 per ton are targets for cost-effective climate change mitigation. The Biden Admin pegs it at $50-150/ton. Then there's the cost of doing nothing. X emissions results in Y property lost, or Z dollars in wildfire mitigation effort - as an example. This gives us a metric by which to compare the cost of doing something versus the cost of doing nothing.

But all that stuff is somewhat intangible. I'm feeling as though it might be more useful in meetings and workshops to do on a household level. For example:

Cost of doing something: There is a cost to trying to prevent climate change. ~$20k per EV, ~$12-24k per fully-electrified building, installing the solar and storage to meet those loads, etc.

Cost of doing "nothing": Because we're failing on climate change, more of us have to invest in defensible space given the higher likelihood of fire. In this case, the cost of defensible space can be directly calculated. I just had a quote for $3,500 to remove a tree near my house. It looks like five were previously removed. I could arguably remove three more. Averaging $2k per tree, at 9 trees, we get $18k. Then there's the air purifiers, the delivery fees on those, the costs to go to hotels every three years for a weeks, etc, etc, etc.

Had we all spent the $12-24k from 2000-2015, we wouldn't have to spend the $18k+ now.

[old goat]

If carbon emissions went to zero tomorrow you still have to do defensible space and pay for controlled burns and thinning projects. It's not just climate change, it's a century of fire suppression and development that ignored the risks of fire. (And it's not just fires in CA. One could make a good argument that NOLA and Miami shouldn't exist--and in a couple of decades they probably won't, if not sooner.

[SumJongGuy]

If carbon emissions went to zero tomorrow you still have to do defensible space and pay for controlled burns and thinning projects. It's not just climate change, it's a century of fire suppression and development that ignored the risks of fire. (And it's not just fires in CA. One could make a good argument that NOLA and Miami shouldn't exist--and in a couple of decades they probably won't, if not sooner.

And it will take eons for the chaotic weather we're causing to settle down as well after going to zero carbon emissions. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to reduce or reverse our part in that equation. The whole planet was once one giant land mass surrounded by water. Yes, some of these changes would have happened without us, but instead generations down the road instead of now..

[AirheadD8]

And it will take eons for the chaotic weather we're causing to settle down as well after going to zero carbon emissions. ened without us, but instead generations down the road instead of now..

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKCN22318V

Nope it would clear up pretty quickly ......

Question for the people who live fire prone areas ,if you have a well why not put in a misting system or sprinkler systems around your perimeter . A back up generator would be necessary as well .

Also maybe a stucco exterior /clay roof as well ...

[old goat]

And it will take eons for the chaotic weather we're causing to settle down as well after going to zero carbon emissions. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to reduce or reverse our part in that equation. The whole planet was once one giant land mass surrounded by water. Yes, some of these changes would have happened without us, but instead generations down the road instead of now..

I never said we shouldn't do everything we can to at least slow down climate change. My point is that it makes no sense to use the cost of defensible space in some cost benefit analysis for reducing carbon emissions. You would have to do defensible space even if the planet was cooling. Besides, at this point we're way beyond doing a cost-benefit analysis--we reduce carbon emissions as much as we can as fast as we can or we either burn to death, starve to death, or drown. Anyone who is still a skeptic is not going to be convinced by numbers.

[SumJongGuy]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKCN22318V

Nope it would clear up pretty quickly ......
.

Nuclear winter works quickly too. Hard to believe that poles could refreeze fast enough (volume not just extend) to make huge gains in short spans of time with just carbon reduction though. If that's what the climatologists believe though they do know better than I do.

[shaft]

Let's flip the convo for a bit. I'm of the opinion that the people on this forum love our natural spaces as much as just about anyone, but have done close to nothing since realizing there is a problem. That can be 1990 (first assessment report.) It can be 2003 (An Inconvenient Truth,) it can be 2005 (failure to ratify Kyoto.)

Prove me wrong! Let's celebrate some wins! What have you done in your personal life? What are you going to do?

• Transportation -
• Building Electric Emissions - These are self-correcting in the long-term as the grid cleans, but impt in the near-term.
• Building Gas Emissions -
• Industrial -
• Agricultural -

[rideit]

Good summary, but I'll add that there are not that that many places in the US anymore that are powered primarily by coal. And ain't nobody building new coal plants these days
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-h...es-electricity
I clicked through every state, and here are the states where coal is the largest source of power: Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
In most of them, gas (or some other form) is a very close second and the overall grid is likely clean enough that EVs have the overall advantage over ICE vehicles. If you're in WY or WV though, your electricity sucks.

Battery disposal is IMO the biggest problem right at the moment, but one that I expect will be solved sooner than later as there are a lot of smart people working on it.

Here in Western Wyoming we use Fall River Power CO-OP, which is hydro. And cheap as fuck.