Taking a step they claimed will help achieve the goal of “carbon neutrality” by 2050, the vast majority of the members of the New York City Council voted to ban the use of natural gas in new buildings.
Outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio signed the December 15 measure into law before leaving office at the end of the year.
Ban with Exceptions
Specifically, New York City’s ordinance prohibits the use of oil or natural gas-powered stoves, space heaters, and water boilers in new buildings. The new law applies to buildings under seven stories high built after 2023 and to structures taller than seven stories erected after July 1, 2027.
The ordinance exempts commercial kitchens, crematoriums, hospitals, laboratories, laundromats, and manufacturing facilities from the restrictions.
Commercial and residential buildings which currently using natural gas or oil are unaffected by the ordinance.
New York is the latest and largest city to embrace the concept of “green buildings,” which was pioneered in Berkeley, Calif. in 2019 and later followed by nearby San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland, as well as Seattle.
“If the largest city in America can take this critical step to ban gas use, any city can do the same thing,” de Blasio said in a statement. “This is how to fight back against climate change on the local level and guarantee a green city for generations to come.”
Electric Reliability Concerns
But a study released Dec. 3 by the New York Independent Systems Operator (NYISO) warned of risks to the grid’s reliability as the New York state moves to implement former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s goal of net zero carbon emissions, saying “our reliability margins are thinning to concerning levels beginning in 2023.”
“We have to move carefully with the grid in transition in order to maintain reliability and avoid the kind of problems we’ve seen in other parts of the U.S.,” Zach G. Smith, NYIOS vice president of system & resource planning, said in a statement.
Replacing natural gas with power derived from wind and solar sources will not only pose challenges to grid reliability; it may well drive up the cost of electricity in a state that already has some of the nation’s highest energy prices.
Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that residents and businesses in states which rely on fossil fuels for the vast majority of their electric power pay the lowest electric power rates in the nation. The same data show that as states add greater amounts of renewable power to their systems their power prices rise. The faster fossil fuels or nuclear generated electric power is displaced by wind and solar, the faster the rates increase. Data also indicate power outages are becoming more common across the United States as ever greater amounts of renewable power sources are added to regional power grids.
New York Power Facts
New York State currently derives approximately 49 percent of its power from fossil fuels, 45 percent from natural gas and 4 percent from oil. At the beginning of 2021, another 24 percent of the state’s electricity came from nuclear and 22 percent from hydropower.
New York also has the sixth highest average electric power prices in the nation, and these rates should be expected to rise as the state recently closed the large Indian Point nuclear power plant, one of the largest sources reliable electric power in the state.
Foreclosing expanded usage of natural gas, among the lowest cost sources of power for heating and cooking, in New York City means new residences will have to rely on higher priced electricity to heat their homes and to cook. Evidence indicates this should also be expected to contribute to higher energy prices for those residents and non-exempt businesses.
Based on laws passed in a number of state capitols in the years since climate activists first began pushing cities to ban new natural gas usage, the role anti-fossil-fuel policies adopted by municipalities have played in rising electricity prices have not gone unnoticed. Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and most recently Florida, have all passed laws prohibiting local governments from banning new natural gas usage.
‘Mean to New Yorkers’
Anti-gas policies are nothing more than virtue signaling that won’t affect the weather, says energy analyst David Wojick, Ph.D., a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute, which co-publishes Environment & Climate News.
“Taking the convenience of gas away from New Yorkers does no good whatsoever as far as reducing bad weather is concerned,” said Wojick. “It’s nothing more than green posturing; great amounts of gas will still be burned to produce power when the sun does not shine bright enough or the wind doesn’t blow strong enough, which is most of the time.”
New York’s ban will harm its residents but do nothing to prevent climate change, says Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research.
“This is the height of meaninglessness,” said Kish. “It is meaningless to the climate and it is ‘mean’ to New Yorkers, particularly the poor who will pay more for electricity.
“China commissioned a coal plant at the end of December that will dwarf any reduced emissions from this cruel act,” Kish said.
Bonner R. Cohen, Ph.D., (bcohen@nationalcenter.org) is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research and a senior policy analyst with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.