What Happens If New York Buildings Use Less Gas? - Inside Climate News
insideclimatenews.org
New York’s utilities keep investing in natural gas, but this conflicts with the state’s climate goals. Experts worry that ratepayers will eventually struggle to keep up with rising costs.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34485135

Basically what happens is this:

  • There’s a significant fixed cost associated with maintaining gas infrastructure
  • When there are fewer ratepayers, that cost is spread over fewer people
  • So once more than a certain percentage of the population quits gas, it kicks off a spiral of increasing prices that push everybody who can afford to get off gas off it
  • The few that are left are in real trouble financially.

This is why there has been a push in places like Ithaca, NY to do it block-by-block, allowing for distribution shutdown in conjunction with individual building improvements.

  • wabasso@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    Interesting! Not sure how this potential chain reaction never occurred to me.

    One thing that keeps gas demand up are natural gas fired generating stations which will have increased demand from the heat pumps, and then there’s the general electrical demand growth like from data centres and what have you.

    Ideally you keep up with renewables and nuclear, but there’s not always the political or YIMBY will for that.