NYC to issue gas ban with national implications

New York City is ready to become the largest U.S. city to ban the use of fossil fuels for building heat, making it a testing ground for national efforts to dump natural gas.

The city council is due to vote this afternoon and the ban would apply to new buildings less than seven stories high in 2023 and would include all new construction by 2027. A majority of councilors have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill, and Mayor Bill de Blasio is a frontrunner, making its approval likely.

If passed, the bill could effectively make electric heat pumps, stoves and water heaters the next-generation energy for New York buildings and restrict how utilities can introduce other alternative heating fuels, such as hydrogen and biomethane.

“It’s pretty clear that if we’re going to take some serious action on climate, the clearest way to do it is to make sure the next generation of buildings rely on electricity,” said Ben Furnas, the city’s head of sustainability.

A gas ban in New York could set a national precedent for other cities, given the magnitude and complexity of decarbonizing the housing stock. It could also boost the markets for electric heat technologies by cutting costs.

A coalition of four groups of state and local environmental organizations known as #GasFreeNYC last week celebrated a deal between members of the city council and the mayor to pass the bill, calling it “a groundbreaking victory”. They also thanked the lead sponsor, Councilor Alicka Ampry-Samuel, who will soon join the Biden administration as a regional administrator in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Originating in temperate California, building gas bans is rare on the East Coast. New York City’s cold winters and preference for massive buildings can complicate implementation, as these factors can reduce the efficiency of electric heat pumps, increasing the cost of building heat.

Those complications were seized upon by opponents, who said the mandates would increase the cost of utility bills and discourage new homes, while increasing pressure on the power grid.

The opposition includes national fossil fuel trade groups such as the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbied against the bill, as well as Exxon Mobil Corp., which ran Facebook ads in the New York area encouraging consumers to “express your support” for gas stoves. The ban also divided the city’s gas companies and drew criticism from real estate developers, whose representatives predicted it would do little to cut emissions but “significantly raise energy bills for New Yorkers.”

But the city’s analyzes argue that electrical systems in new buildings would be roughly competitive with the cost of gas systems in existing ones. That’s because new buildings retain heat better than older buildings, while heat pumps can also serve as air conditioning.

Several huge residential towers and commercial spaces are already being built with all-electric systems in the city, officials and environmentalists point out.

By the time the ban goes into effect for larger buildings, heat pump technologies will have improved, they say. A study by the Urban Green Council, a nonprofit sustainable buildings organization that supports the ban, found that New York City’s winter peak load was more than 40 percent lower than the summer peak, meaning there’s “enough” room to run electrical energy. heating in the vicinity online. term.

“We’re really setting the pace here and saying that if we can do it in New York City, we can do it anywhere,” Furnas said.

“We’re big, we’re compact, we’re complicated, we have all four seasons. We’ll put up a sign and say the next generation of buildings will be electric. We want to be a model for the world,” he added .

Less emissions?

If passed, the New York City ban could mark one of the biggest wins yet for the building electrification movement, which emerged in 2019 following a similar law in Berkeley, California.

Dozens of cities in California and elsewhere on the West Coast have since followed suit with their own restrictions on natural gas in new buildings. Usually these are intended to encourage electrical sources of space and water heat.

Such bans, however, have faced challenges on the East Coast. The Boston-area suburb of Brookline, for example, tried to issue one in 2019, but its status remains questionable after it was dismissed by the Massachusetts Attorney General as violating state law.

The New York City vote comes days after President Biden ordered federal agencies to decarbonize their buildings, including by swapping gas appliances for electrical appliances — a move that could make electrical appliances cheaper for the private sector over time. (energy wire, December 13th).

The New York bill includes several exemptions, including affordable housing, manufacturers, laundromats, and any “commercial kitchen.” It would also generally not apply to existing buildings, although major renovations could trigger the bill’s requirements.

Taken together, it will likely cover several thousand new homes and commercial spaces each year. According to the city’s planning department, more than 20,000 homes in new buildings have been granted permits throughout New York City by 2020. That was a decrease from the previous year, when nearly 30,000 new units were authorized.

“We have a bill that covers the vast majority of buildings built,” Furnas says.

Reducing heat emissions in those new buildings could help meet the climate goals of cities and states. About 40 percent of New York City’s carbon dioxide is emitted by boilers, furnaces and water heaters. Much of the state’s emissions can be traced back to the New York City area. And the state government’s own climate advisers have recommended a similar ban on fossil fuels that would begin in 2024.

Some opponents of the bill have questioned whether swapping fossil fuels for electric heating would really reduce emissions, at least in the short term.

For example, the New York Real Estate Board noted that several new sources of renewable energy, such as offshore wind, would not come online for years, and predicted that the city’s heavy reliance on fossil fuel electricity would lead to an increase in carbon emissions. associated with a switch to electric heating.

“While we recognize that the efficient electrification of buildings is an important part of achieving these goals, these policies must be implemented so that New Yorkers have reliable, affordable, carbon-free electricity to heat, cool and power their homes. . companies,” James Whelan, the group’s chairman, said in a statement to E&E News.

Hydrogen and politics

Implementing the city’s ban, meanwhile, is said to be in the hands of elected Mayor Eric Adams, who once said during a televised election debate that he did not support a ban on gas on city buildings. Adams will take up employment on January 1.

The ban would also fall in the middle of other battles over natural gas policy.

A moratorium on new gas connections imposed by utility company National Grid in 2019 over the state’s refusal to allow new pipelines led to a stalemate with the then-government. Andrew Cuomo (D), who demanded the lifting of the moratorium. This fall, an independent investigation commissioned by state regulators concluded that the New York City region continued to face “significant” risks of an emergency natural gas shortage.

With nearly 2 million customers in the New York City area, National Grid is one of the city’s two major gas companies. It joined the opposition to the gas ban bill, saying in testimony to the city council last month that it had “real concerns” about “higher energy costs for customers,” especially low-income families.

The gas ban proposal “takes off viable options for decarbonisation at a time when we need more pathways to Net Zero, not less,” National Grid vice president of corporate affairs, Bryan Grimaldi, wrote in the testimony.

That contrasted with the stance of Consolidated Edison, which provides both electricity and gas in the city and called the gas ban “a sensible and necessary step.”

However, both companies say they hope to scale up and sell natural gas substitutes that could run through existing pipelines, such as hydrogen.

Despite the official focus on promoting electrification, the bill could eventually allow buildings to get their heat from hydrogen or other low-carbon fuels like biomethane.

The bill prohibits the combustion of any substance that releases 25 kilograms of CO2 or more per 1 million British thermal units of energy. Low-carbon fuels can meet that limit.

Phoebe Galt, a spokesperson for Food & Water Watch, said the 25-kilogram limit was intended to discourage utilities from mixing small percentages of low-carbon fuels into their natural gas pipelines, as a tactic to keep gas infrastructure online.

“We were trying to future-proof that statistic,” said Galt, whose group was part of the #GasFreeNYC coalition, which helped shape the bill. “We thought that with the 25-kilogram number, we would block everything we could possibly see coming.”