Berkeley becomes first U.S. city to ban natural gas in new homes

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

To add insult to injury to the Natural Gas industry, apparently some lucky employee will get paid a cool quarter million dollars a year to implement the ban against Natural Gas.

     / edit  ...  and what makes this even more absurd is the fact that Natural Gas was *by far* the biggest energy source for generating electricity in California in 2018.  Hat tip to @esgeo for the California dot gov link.

 

Berkeley becomes first U.S. city to ban natural gas in new homes

Berkeley became the first city nationwide to ban the use of natural gas in new low-rise residential buildings in a unanimous vote Tuesday by the City Council.

The ordinance, introduced by Councilwoman Kate Harrison, goes into effect Jan. 1, 2020, and phases out the use of natural gas by requiring all new single-family homes, town homes and small apartment buildings to have electric infrastructure. After its passage, Harrison thanked the community and her colleagues “for making Berkeley the first city in California and the United States to prohibit natural gas infrastructure in new buildings.”

The city will include commercial buildings and larger residential structures as the state moves to develop regulations for those, officials said.

The ordinance allocates $273,341 per year for a two-year staff position in the Building and Safety Division within the city’s Department of Planning and Development. The employee will be responsible for implementing the ban.

...

[Jakridge + 122]

16 minutes ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Apparently some lucky employee will get paid a cool quarter million dollars a year to implement the ban.

Berkeley becomes first U.S. city to ban natural gas in new homes

Berkeley became the first city nationwide to ban the use of natural gas in new low-rise residential buildings in a unanimous vote Tuesday by the City Council.

The ordinance, introduced by Councilwoman Kate Harrison, goes into effect Jan. 1, 2020, and phases out the use of natural gas by requiring all new single-family homes, town homes and small apartment buildings to have electric infrastructure. After its passage, Harrison thanked the community and her colleagues “for making Berkeley the first city in California and the United States to prohibit natural gas infrastructure in new buildings.”

The city will include commercial buildings and larger residential structures as the state moves to develop regulations for those, officials said.

The ordinance allocates $273,341 per year for a two-year staff position in the Building and Safety Division within the city’s Department of Planning and Development. The employee will be responsible for implementing the ban.

I've heard as California goes so goes the nation, but I don't think that applies anymore. These people have lost their minds, as have their like-minded political apperatchiks such as antifa, the squad and well quite frankly the rest of the Democrat Party.

[esgeo + 54]

Probably has more to do with seismic hazard risk matrix than climate change. Can't ignore what happened in San Bruno, and lack of pubic confidence in PG&E, when you consider how the decision making process on this sort of thing happens. And it is Berserkly, so it is probably the will of the populace there as well.

  NG generated electricity was the biggest generation source for California in 2018, so its not like that's going away overnight.   https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html 

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

2 hours ago, esgeo said:

Natural Gas generated electricity was the biggest generation source for California in 2018, so its not like that's going away overnight.   https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html 

^ this.

From the California dot gov link above:

 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

what is surprising about the table introduced by Tom is the large presence of "renewables."  Solar alone is greater than both nuclear and large hydro.  That suggests a large market penetration, understandable in sunny Southern California and of course encouraged by lots of special rebates and power purchase agreements.  It also suggests quite a bit of frequency instability in the grid, probably kept running by the addition of large synchronous condensers that we don't really hear about much. It also suggests large retail price instability as the Enron-type players get into the act under the bizarre auction system they have for spot power purchases. 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Is anyone else just sitting back and waiting for California to implode?

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

46 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Is anyone else just sitting back and waiting for California to implode?

It is doing that right now, right under your eyes. 

To explain:  The current crop of legislators in California have crafted a system so bizarre, so oppressive, that it has collapsed vast swaths of entrepreneurial activity, outside of criminal activity. The result of this is that Cali now has about 35% of the entire nation's homeless population - created in very large part through abusive laws regarding property rights, through which (a process known as "non-judicial foreclosure") any homeowner with a mortgage loan  (and in Cali, that is just about everybody) can have some litigation "trustee" simply go sell your home off any time they want to, with impunity.  No filing of a lawsuit is required.  The result is that hundreds of thousands of homeowners, including those that have fully paid each month on their mortgage, find themselves blindsided, their homes simply sold out from underneath them by these "trustees" - and there is absolutely nothing that they can do about it! 

Stripped of their home equity, these folks end up living in their car.  From that flows the unique phenomenon, known as the "WalMart campers," the homeless who end up camped out in the parking lots of the local WalMart stores.  Some of these homeless, the luckier ones, are able to find a used RV, or motorhome (or motorhome trailer, to be towed by a pickup or heavy car), which they can leave at the fringes of parking lots while going to work at some service job somewhere.  Thus these homeless are able to eke out a meager living. 

The people responsible are the usual villains - Wall Street assholes, worthless lawyers, and cynical, abusive  "trustees" paid to do Wall Street work.  It could be stopped by a stroke of the pen, but the Cali Legislature does this because they are disturbed people. 

Now, in that environment, and given the vast numbers of "Ordinances" that these crazies in Cali go install, who is going to go out there and live under that regime?  Not the entrepreneur.  Not the mega-corporation.  What you have are movie stars, some tech people around Santa Clara, and the criminals.  Do you seriously think you can have a functioning society based on that? Let's get real here. 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

4 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

It is doing that right now, right under your eyes. 

To explain:  The current crop of legislators in California have crafted a system so bizarre, so oppressive, that it has collapsed vast swaths of entrepreneurial activity, outside of criminal activity. The result of this is that Cali now has about 35% of the entire nation's homeless population - created in very large part through abusive laws regarding property rights, through which (a process known as "non-judicial foreclosure") any homeowner with a mortgage loan  (and in Cali, that is just about everybody) can have some litigation "trustee" simply go sell your home off any time they want to, with impunity.  No filing of a lawsuit is required.  The result is that hundreds of thousands of homeowners, including those that have fully paid each month on their mortgage, find themselves blindsided, their homes simply sold out from underneath them by these "trustees" - and there is absolutely nothing that they can do about it! 

Stripped of their home equity, these folks end up living in their car.  From that flows the unique phenomenon, known as the "WalMart campers," the homeless who end up camped out in the parking lots of the local WalMart stores.  Some of these homeless, the luckier ones, are able to find a used RV, or motorhome (or motorhome trailer, to be towed by a pickup or heavy car), which they can leave at the fringes of parking lots while going to work at some service job somewhere.  Thus these homeless are able to eke out a meager living. 

The people responsible are the usual villains - Wall Street assholes, worthless lawyers, and cynical, abusive  "trustees" paid to do Wall Street work.  It could be stopped by a stroke of the pen, but the Cali Legislature does this because they are disturbed people. 

Now, in that environment, and given the vast numbers of "Ordinances" that these crazies in Cali go install, who is going to go out there and live under that regime?  Not the entrepreneur.  Not the mega-corporation.  What you have are movie stars, some tech people around Santa Clara, and the criminals.  Do you seriously think you can have a functioning society based on that? Let's get real here. 

This seems to be a well rooted insanity. I wonder if there will ever be a serious movement to force a return to common sense?

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

Just now, Douglas Buckland said:

This seems to be a well rooted insanity. I wonder if there will ever be a serious movement to force a return to common sense?

Short answer:  No. 

Insanity is a peculiar phenomenon; it has a biological component as well as a mass-hysteria component.  One of the fascinating things about how diseases, including mental illness, spreads genetically is the mutation of healthy genetic material by breeding with deficient genetic material.  Defective material, or mutated genes,will, if introduced into a closed-off gene pool, rapidly spread through the human-mating process of essentially randomized coitus. In the "old days," a girl's mother knew all the other families in town, knew which young males were mutated  (criminal behavior, destructive behavior, or genetic issues such as diabetes and addiction) and would keep their daughters away from "that sort."  In that structure, the rapid spread of defective genetic material was kept limited. 

Today, young women mate rapidly with whatever male appears pleasing, and that superficiality in mate selection has allowed rapid spread of mutations.  At this point Cali is largely populated by crazies, and I see no hope for any resolution, other than the wholesale removal and sterilization of that native population.  I do not consider that as realistic, given the current culture, so Cali will continue its spiral into the toilet, with the major growth industry being crime.  

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

You would think that at some point the people of California would realize that the powers that be (and those who elect them) are dragging them further and further into the cesspool.

As there seems to be a majority of deranged voters, the only option for those with common sense is mass migration out of 'the Land of Fruits and Nuts'

I find the whole situation baffling.

 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

5 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

As there seems to be a majority of deranged voters, the only option for those with common sense is mass migration out of 'the Land of Fruits and Nuts'

I find the whole situation baffling.

You are already getting out-migration in large numbers from Cali.  The people who move in are largely poor people from Central America and the criminal class from both Central America (and Mexico) and other US States.  Cali is likely to end up as the epi-center of crime in the USA.  

The "land of fruit and nuts" is being destroyed by misuse of so-called "water rights," where the vast areas of agriculture in the Central Valley are facing depletion of groundwater, and no available surface waters.  So, it will go back to being a dust bowl soon enough.  The rest of the USA will see dietary changes, and a reliance on other sources of their fruits and vegetables.  Specifically, I predict large numbers of greenhouses will be constructed in other States for local production of produce.  Investing in factories that manufacture kit greenhouses would be an interesting business opportunity.  

California is wrecking itself.  I see no hope for it, due to the confluence of events, the departure of the rational, the expansion of the mentally ill, and the in-migration of criminals.  

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

1 hour ago, Jan van Eck said:

California is wrecking itself.  I see no hope for it, due to the confluence of events, the departure of the rational, the expansion of the mentally ill, and the in-migration of criminals.  

Unfortunately, that seems to sum it up.  I lived in Southern California for a few years back in the 80s.  Ended up moving to New Jersey and then New York City to get away from the craziness of California.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

2 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

You are already getting out-migration in large numbers from Cali.  The people who move in are largely poor people from Central America and the criminal class from both Central America (and Mexico) and other US States.  Cali is likely to end up as the epi-center of crime in the USA.  

The "land of fruit and nuts" is being destroyed by misuse of so-called "water rights," where the vast areas of agriculture in the Central Valley are facing depletion of groundwater, and no available surface waters.  So, it will go back to being a dust bowl soon enough.  The rest of the USA will see dietary changes, and a reliance on other sources of their fruits and vegetables.  Specifically, I predict large numbers of greenhouses will be constructed in other States for local production of produce.  Investing in factories that manufacture kit greenhouses would be an interesting business opportunity.  

California is wrecking itself.  I see no hope for it, due to the confluence of events, the departure of the rational, the expansion of the mentally ill, and the in-migration of criminals.  

You are about to see serious legal battles over water rights. Decades ago California signed deals with other Western States so that they had access to a certain number of acre-feet of water from these states rivers and glaciers.

With the balloning populations in many of these states and recent dry years or less than normal snowpack coupled with California's mis-management of their own resources, the other Western states may not be willing to honor these deals.

[Boat + 1,323]

It’s amusing to read how confusing it is that the rich  well educated people of Berkeley are willing to spend more for cleaner water and air. 

The are attempting to avoid premature babies, lung disease, exploding houses and other byproducts of Nat Gas, And will be called Fascists if they buy renewables as a replacement fuel source for avoiding hospitals.

Dont worry, the poor will suck FF’s decades longer than their wealthier counterparts. The cheapest homes will be in the more polluted areas. Their health care? Add it to the 20 trillion debt. 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

3 hours ago, Boat said:

It’s amusing to read how confusing it is that the rich  well educated people of Berkeley are willing to spend more for cleaner water and air. 

The are attempting to avoid premature babies, lung disease, exploding houses and other byproducts of Nat Gas, And will be called Fascists if they buy renewables as a replacement fuel source for avoiding hospitals.

Dont worry, the poor will suck FF’s decades longer than their wealthier counterparts. The cheapest homes will be in the more polluted areas. Their health care? Add it to the 20 trillion debt. 

I can't figure out what it is that you are trying to say...no offense intended.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

20 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

To add insult to injury to the Natural Gas industry, apparently some lucky employee will get paid a cool quarter million dollars a year to implement the ban against Natural Gas.

     / edit  ...  and what makes this even more absurd is the fact that Natural Gas was *by far* the biggest energy source for generating electricity in California in 2018.  Hat tip to @esgeo for the California dot gov link.

 

Berkeley becomes first U.S. city to ban natural gas in new homes

Berkeley became the first city nationwide to ban the use of natural gas in new low-rise residential buildings in a unanimous vote Tuesday by the City Council.

The ordinance, introduced by Councilwoman Kate Harrison, goes into effect Jan. 1, 2020, and phases out the use of natural gas by requiring all new single-family homes, town homes and small apartment buildings to have electric infrastructure. After its passage, Harrison thanked the community and her colleagues “for making Berkeley the first city in California and the United States to prohibit natural gas infrastructure in new buildings.”

The city will include commercial buildings and larger residential structures as the state moves to develop regulations for those, officials said.

The ordinance allocates $273,341 per year for a two-year staff position in the Building and Safety Division within the city’s Department of Planning and Development. The employee will be responsible for implementing the ban.

...

It says a two year position, so the person probably actually takes home closer to 100,000/year (not all labor costs are given to the employee).

Edited July 18, 2019 by Enthalpic

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

14 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

The result of this is that Cali now has about 35% of the entire nation's homeless population

Some of that is probably because you can live through the winter without freezing to death.

Edited July 18, 2019 by Enthalpic

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

13 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

The "land of fruit and nuts" is being destroyed by misuse of so-called "water rights," where the vast areas of agriculture in the Central Valley are facing depletion of groundwater, and no available surface waters. 

Saudi Arabia thanks you.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-water-drought-scarce-saudi-arabia

Essentially trading oil, for crop land and almost unlimited fresh water. 

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

8 hours ago, Boat said:

It’s amusing to read how confusing it is that the rich  well educated people of Berkeley are willing to spend more for cleaner water and air. 

The are attempting to avoid premature babies, lung disease, exploding houses and other byproducts of Nat Gas, And will be called Fascists if they buy renewables as a replacement fuel source for avoiding hospitals.

Dont worry, the poor will suck FF’s decades longer than their wealthier counterparts. The cheapest homes will be in the more polluted areas. Their health care? Add it to the 20 trillion debt. 

Damn liberals with their fresh air and water.

#MakeAmericaFilthy

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

5 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

I can't figure out what it is that you are trying to say...no offense intended.

Rich people won't tolerate being poisoned even though they are contributing to the environmental destruction.  They will use money to offload the pollution and misery onto the poor.

For example:

-Eat organic produce that reduces the productively of farmland (less total food, but the rich get organic).

-Drink bottled or filtered water instead of tap water of ever reducing quality.

-Use air filters and air conditioning.

-Live far away from the sources of pollution and wire in clean energy.

 

That is until the poor have had enough and they come for you!  The revolution will not be televised.

 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

21 hours ago, esgeo said:

Probably has more to do with seismic hazard risk matrix than climate change. Can't ignore what happened in San Bruno, and lack of pubic confidence in PG&E, when you consider how the decision making process on this sort of thing happens. And it is Berserkly, so it is probably the will of the populace there as well.

  NG generated electricity was the biggest generation source for California in 2018, so its not like that's going away overnight.   https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html 

There were problems with very old and very poorly maintained equipment that did not have up to date improvements. Electric is fine for small homes in that area. They would probably be fitted and served fine with heat pump systems. I had one in Auburn California and it worked great. The energy will still come from natural gas for the most part. Of course they could get even crazier and go with all "remewables". California cannot rely on its hydro due to low rainfall levels in most years in most places there. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

1 hour ago, Enthalpic said:

Rich people won't tolerate being poisoned even though they are contributing to the environmental destruction.  They will use money to offload the pollution and misery onto the poor.

For example:

-Eat organic produce that reduces the productively of farmland (less total food, but the rich get organic).

-Drink bottled or filtered water instead of tap water of ever reducing quality.

-Use air filters and air conditioning.

-Live far away from the sources of pollution and wire in clean energy.

 

That is until the poor have had enough and they come for you!  The revolution will not be televised.

 

I think just about everyone has air conditioning, evaporative coolers or fans in hot areas. Organic food is not proven to be any better than normal supermarket food. Filtered water is not much better than tap water, if at all in 99.9% of cases. Our poor are not poor at all by worldwide standards.Our social welfare programs are adequate considering we cannot afford even what we provide.  

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

1 hour ago, ronwagn said:

I think just about everyone has air conditioning, evaporative coolers or fans in hot areas. Organic food is not proven to be any better than normal supermarket food. Filtered water is not much better than tap water, if at all in 99.9% of cases. Our poor are not poor at all by worldwide standards.Our social welfare programs are adequate considering we cannot afford even what we provide.  

I agree that most of those things aren't much better. Filtered water is better in older communities and buildings; "safe" drinking water level for lead is 10ppb and old pipes and solder contaminate it up to near that point easily.  Zero is better for babies, adults Meh,  I drink tap water... and beer made from filtered water.

Welfare programs could be vastly improved if the defense budget was cut.  Also, the US doesn't seem to care about debt at all so take care the people.  Welfare program spending is partially recouped though lowered crime and medical expenditures.

 

Edited July 18, 2019 by Enthalpic

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

On 7/18/2019 at 5:42 AM, Tom Kirkman said:

The ordinance allocates $273,341 per year for a two-year staff position in the Building and Safety Division within the city’s Department of Planning and Development. The employee will be responsible for implementing the ban.

 

3 hours ago, Enthalpic said:

It says a two year position, so the person probably actually takes home closer to 100,000/year (not all labor costs are given to the employee).

 

Greenback New Deal ... getting paid to stop Natural Gas  ... from a Green New Deal perspective, this is priceless.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

14 minutes ago, Tom Kirkman said:

 

 

Greenback New Deal ... getting paid to stop Natural Gas  ... from a Green New Deal perspective, this is priceless.

Stupid is found on both sides.

In Alberta, our newly elected con government (which ran on fiscal responsibility) just increased the deficit and spent $30 million to essentially spread pro-oil propaganda and shut down environmental groups.

Nice kickback for his oil friends in Calgary I'm sure.

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/complacent-approach-doesnt-work-ucp-energy-war-room-set-for-calgary

"Establishing a $30-million energy war room to “counter the lies” about the industry" 

No joke, a 30 million dollar propaganda machine is clearly on the books. 

Couple hundred grand for a green supporter is peanuts.

Edited July 18, 2019 by Enthalpic