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Don’t let Trump hear of this.
Same in Victoria Australia
Gas hot water systems to be phased out of Victorian homes under new energy reforms
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-24/victoria-gas-reforms-announcement/105451354
We had so much gas and it was so amazing and cheap and now we’re running out of it
This sounds great but can the 70 year old grid handle the electrical load? Are they adding incentives for free or reduced solar? Is it practical AT ALL?
California has a lot of solar already, but the incentives are not great right now, and they have added battery storage too
Add to it that if your power doesn’t come from renewable sources, it’s worse for the environment to switch to electric appliances. Just. This sounds like people really meaning well…
Actually no because it can be electrified in the future. Just push California to build up more renewables.
This is California we are talking about, they have a ton of renewables in their grid
Alright so I sat down and actually looked at the numbers:
According to the California Energy Comission, the total nameplate capacity of california (in 2024) was 89,207 MW. Of this, ~43% (38,686 MW) is supplied by natural gas powerplants. The short answer to the question of when adding electrical utilities will not be a net loss for the state is “when they replace that 38,686MW with renewable power”. That’s not insurmountable - according to this article from the California Governor’s Office itself, in 2024 alone they added 7,000 MW of new renewable nameplate capacity, and over the last 5 years they’ve added a total of more than 25,000 MW of renewable power!
So the short answer is that, assuming the trend of year-over-year increases in power continues (which is safe), in an optimistic three and a half years this will no longer be a net-loss for the environment. A ~three year lead time on new capacity is honestly not bad, and taking this into account I can’t in good faith say that this is a bad or absurd project for them to undertake, and I apologize for not doing this initally.
EDIT: okay so… that was my conclusion. I went back to check my work because I noticed I’d screwed up a conversion (I’ve converted GW to MW in a couple places just for readability) and… When you start checking the source data being reported, it’s really apparent that the 7000MW figure reported by Gov. Newsom’s office includes, yes, the additional power generation capacity added to the state’s grid but it also includes the nameplate capacity of all the new battery storage facilities.
…
Yeah. So. From 2023 to 2024, there was a reduction in natural gas production of 1,090 MW, and additional capacity added of 2507 MW (2,375 MW from PV, 132 MW from Wind), for a net increase of 1372 MW. New battery facilities are important, but they only serve to smooth the load and supplement renewable generation, they don’t add anything to the actual power generation capacity. At this rate, it’s going to take around 14 years for there to be enough capacity added to fully replace the power generated by natural gas, and that’s completely ignoring that power demands will be steadily increasing.
I don’t… actually know what to say about this. I’m not anti-renewables, my own home has limited solar capacity (I am not in a great spot for it, sadly) but I’m a hearty and vocal proponent of it. I just came in here to present a point about how it’s technically better to hold off on upgrades like this, because it’s important for us to scrape out every last iota of efficiency if we’re going to save what’s left of the planet. I wasn’t really anticipating that a full 2/3 of the lauded 7,000 MW of renewable energy that’s been added is just… made up.
I’m actually tearing up a little. I don’t know what we’re going to do, guys. This is all just so completely fucked up.
Classic “road to hell being paved with good intentions” vibes.
California is great at putting it’s horse before its cart
California has the 2nd highest electric rates in the country. Not sure why they want to fuck poor people even more. I’m for getting things clean, but this is treating a symptom and not the disease.
How is this fucking poor people? They’re providing them free infrastructure upgrades.
I am in the process of electrifying and it saves me money. The electrical options are much more efficient and gas is expensive.
Don’t know if you’re in California and poor, or not. I am. Gas is way cheaper. Don’t misunderstand me, I think things have to move in this direction, but unless it comes with a big subsidy (something along the lines of the heat pumps mentioned in the article), make no mistake, it’s fucking poor people.
How much cheaper is gas? In the UK gas is 1/3 the cost of electricity per mw, but gas boilers are less than 1/3 as efficient so heat pumps are still cheaper to run.
Right now in California natural gas is about $14-15 per thousand cubic feet (yeah it’s a stupid unit), which is about 1 million BTUs (another stupid unit of energy). That translates to about 290 kWh.
The average residential price of electricity in California is about 30 cents per kWh. So the same amount of energy in electricity would be about $87, about 5.8 times as expensive as gas per unit energy.
If a heat pump is 4 times as efficient at heating than a gas furnace, then we’re still looking at higher heating costs for heating a home.
And things like stoves and hot water heaters tend not to be as efficient as heat pumps, so you’re still looking at a 4-6x cost difference from electrification on those.
