City of Sydney backs plan to ban gas from new-build homes, despite intense corporate lobbying
https://reneweconomy.com.au/city-of-sydney-backs-plan-to-ban-gas-from-new-build-homes-despite-intense-corporate-lobb/Open linkView original on aussie.zone121
Comments18
Banning new gas installations is an easy one. We should not be pumping gas into people's homes.
Wood fireplaces is a tough one. The ACT did it, but we don't burn wood for electricity and wood isn't as prone to leaking. The problem is that wood smoke is carcinogenic.
Wood's also (eventually) carbon neutral as long as the forest is replanted. Gas isn't
4% of houses in the ACT use fireplaces for heating, and are responsible for 50% of PM2.5 pollution. I love fireplaces, but I'd never install one.
Heat pumps and induction ALL THE WAY BABYYY
The problem is in places like Tasmania when the elec goes out. We lost power at the end of winter last year for 6 days becase storms took out many power lines. We used our little camper van and ran an extension cord for the fridge and a couple lights and USB charging in the house . A back 2 burner portable gas stove for cooking and we fired up the wood fireplace for heating, usually run heat pumps.
Would have been horrific not to have the wood stove as a heating backup but we were fine becase we had it. Mny people lost power for much longer.
Similar thing after the NZ Christchurch earthquake.
If peoplw only used them for emergency backup wed be fine bit alas.. Same reaosn arseholes keep flying, driving and voting ALP/LNP no matter the consequences.
As to toxic pollution, we kill 11,000 people a year from transport emisisons (30 a day) and don't seem to care ?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-24/air-pollution-modelling-university-of-melbourne-traffic/102015778
People in Australia don't have any other choice. Our cities are designed so poorly and have such terrible infrastructure and public transport that walking, cycling, or taking public transport just aren't viable. And our lack of high speed rail makes intercity travel via anything other than planes a non-starter most of the time. (And, of course, for international travel there basically can never be a viable alternative to flying for Australians.)
We need to seriously work on improving our city and inter-city planning and transport. Which definitely starts by supporting the Greens, especially in local council elections.
Even in places with good public transport and biking options, people still choose to drive. We need to make driving less appealing.
Yes, that too. But more often than not, the best ways to make driving less appealing are also directly ways to make cycling more appealing. For example, lowing speed limits and traffic-calmed residential streets. Modal filters that allow bikes through but force cars to go a different way. Reducing the number of car lanes or removing car parking in order to have room for a bike path. There are rarely things that make driving less appealing that can't also be framed as per se making cycling more appealing.
Wood leaks sap all the time :(
This is excellent news. Shame it's only the City of Sydney though. That's an insanely small area with a population of less than 4% of what people usually think of as "Sydney".
Hopefully this is just the first domino to fall.
About time. Modern induction cooktops heat up at least as quickly as gas, and don’t put the inhabitants at risk of asthma.
Yeah induction is superior to gas in all cooking applications except for stir frying, and developments are catching up to improve in that area too.
Frankly, as someone who's had resistive electric heating cooktops for more than the last decade, even that's fine for most cooking. A little slow to get going, but if you're cooking a stew or a pasta sauce or frying up some sausage and bacon, the lead-time is the only difference, and it's a miniscule amount of the total cooking time anyway.
A decent induction is a lot better than household gas for stir fries. It can dump more heat into a (flat bottomed) wok than a household gas burner and you can get proper wok hei which just isn't possible otherwise. A home gas stove can't dump the 3500w that some induction can.
I've only lived with gas or induction and the heat and controllability from a good quality modern induction stove is unbeatable until you go to commercial gear.
So, I personally have always used a flat-bottomed cooker. And even on my resistive heater it's good enough for my purposes.
But I know that people who are really serious about stir frying prefer round-bottomed woks. Which require unusual specialist tools that may not be as seamless an experience as flat induction is.
Zagorath you're like my favourite enviro person on Aus Lemmy but the meat Zag, the MEAT. Meat is responsible for 20% of the planet's GHG emissions Zag, THE MEAT
As someone who has only ever used an electric stovetop in his entire 35 year life (SE USA), y'all will live. Trust me. My stir fry is fine.
Heck yea
Oh, were you on lemm.ee before?
Ah! I wondered if @[email protected] would make the move here as i read about the lemm.ee business. They post a fair bit in c/aussieenviro. It seems a natural move for them.