this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
226 points (98.3% liked)
Canada
7210 readers
421 users here now
What's going on Canada?
Communities
π Meta
πΊοΈ Provinces / Territories
- Alberta
- British Columbia
- Manitoba
- New Brunswick
- Newfoundland and Labrador
- Northwest Territories
- Nova Scotia
- Nunavut
- Ontario
- Prince Edward Island
- Quebec
- Saskatchewan
- Yukon
ποΈ Cities / Local Communities
- Calgary (AB)
- Edmonton (AB)
- Greater Sudbury (ON)
- Halifax (NS)
- Hamilton (ON)
- Kootenays (BC)
- London (ON)
- Mississauga (ON)
- Montreal (QC)
- Nanaimo (BC)
- Oceanside (BC)
- Ottawa (ON)
- Port Alberni (BC)
- Regina (SK)
- Saskatoon (SK)
- Thunder Bay (ON)
- Toronto (ON)
- Vancouver (BC)
- Vancouver Island (BC)
- Victoria (BC)
- Waterloo (ON)
- Winnipeg (MB)
π Sports
Hockey
- List of All Teams: Post on /c/hockey
- General Community: /c/Hockey
- Calgary Flames
- Edmonton Oilers
- MontrΓ©al Canadiens
- Ottawa Senators
- Toronto Maple Leafs
- Vancouver Canucks
- Winnipeg Jets
Football (NFL)
- List of All Teams:
unknown
Football (CFL)
- List of All Teams:
unknown
Baseball
- List of All Teams:
unknown
- Toronto Blue Jays
Basketball
- List of All Teams:
unknown
- Toronto Raptors
Soccer
- List of All Teams:
unknown
- General Community: /c/CanadaSoccer
- Toronto FC
π» Universities
π΅ Finance / Shopping
- Personal Finance Canada
- BAPCSalesCanada
- Canadian Investor
- Buy Canadian
- Quebec Finance
- Churning Canada
π£οΈ Politics
- Canada Politics
- General:
- By Province:
π Social and Culture
Rules
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Natural gas heating is very efficient and huge BTUs for low cost. When you live where it actually gets cold, it's important. As is heating water. Cooking at restaurants also important.
Not everything is binary. We don't need 100% renewables and 0% gas and 0% plastic and 0% ICE vehicles. Renewable energy is 68% in Canada or 20% in the USA in terms of energy production. Getting those USA numbers to 50% or both to 80% is more important.
FYI, in the USA natural gas is about 32% of the USA's energy use. 15% of natural gas is used by residences. That's 4.8% of the power. Which means this entire debate goes out the window if you just installed 5% more solar or wind energy.
Making people fight and become tribal over trivial things that mean nothing is an easy way to prevent anything from happening. Idiots are fighting over trying to reduce 4.8% of energy that is perfectly fine at what it's doing. Meanwhile the natural gas companies are happy to keep supplying the remaining 27% of the USAs entire power via gas, and not a damn thing is being done. Use your energy to get that 27% down to 22% and you've done better than you ever will with demanding residences be built with shitty alternatives.
I have an air source heat pump for my house and a heat pump water heater. Even in the dead of winter at 0F it kept my house just as warm as always and my water was hot. Heat pumps are not "shitty alternatives" any longer. Maybe in Alaska they would struggle but anywhere else and they work just fine.
If we want to honestly improve the climate then it is REQUIRED that we become carbon negative, not just net zero. And every little bit of emission that is prevented is a lot of power that isn't needed later on to suck that carbon back out of the air.
You can complain that big companies aren't doing enough to cut emissions and I agree, but that doesn't mean we should wait till they clean up their act to start working on ours.
There are also many ways to build a more efficient building envelope and insulation is one of the cheapest things that goes into a house. That makes the heat pumps even more viable in more climates.
I also love how people love to hate on heat pumps when there's so many shit box homes with electric baseboards wasting tons of power.
Yep, the standards for energy efficiency in homes is just barely above being non-existent. We spent decades with cheap energy so no one cared if every house leaked like a sieve. Now that's coming back to bite us.