New York and other cities are trying, building by building, to stop using ancient fossil fuels to heat homes and buildings. In the US, new climate laws aim to speed up the process.
For years, Tami Nelson fought what she calls the “grumpy old man” in the basement. He is ineffective. He stinks. Besides, he took too much money from her.
It’s Ms. Nelson’s nickname for the old oil burner that provides heat and hot water to her eight-unit historic apartment building in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stevenson neighborhood.
Her tenant called to complain about the cold shower. In winter, her monthly heating bill exceeds $1,000. The walls of her cellar were covered with soot and stench.
never ever. Last spring, she took out her old car and replaced it with an electric heat pump. In doing so, she has engaged her age-old New York property in an increasingly urgent global transformation: ridding homes and offices of oil and gas.
In the US, the Biden administration is trying to accelerate the transition with billions of dollars in tax credits to electrify buildings and improve energy efficiency. The global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also accelerated the shift. According to a study published in the journal Nature, heat pump sales in the US and a number of other major markets will increase significantly in 2021.
This is important because emissions from buildings – mainly heating and hot water – account for more than a quarter of national emissions. In New York City, at about 70 percent, most large buildings must drastically reduce their number starting in 2024, in accordance with a 2019 city law. If they exceed emission limits, they will be fined.
Ms. Nelson renovated her building with the help of Donal Baird, an entrepreneur who grew up nearby and founded Bloc Power. His contractor installed the equipment. Miss Nelson rented it long term.
Heat pumps also cool apartments during the summer, as they act as air conditioners and heaters. This winter, for the first time, she won’t have a smelly and unpleasant kerosene stove in her basement. She hopes her bills will also drop.
The city has strict laws, he said, but enforcing them is another matter entirely. “In my opinion, New York City is the most aggressive city in the country in terms of energy efficiency and green buildings,” said Mr. Baird. “We were way behind, we were ineffective.”
In New York, this is a difficult task. The building is old and spacious. Many apartment building owners, including cooperatives, cannot afford to switch to electricity. There are not enough trained workers to modernize them.
Often even in new buildings, let alone older buildings built decades before the advent of heat pumps, there is not enough space to house all the equipment. Expect to see new electrical kits on the rooftops of high-rise buildings – for example, in the Brooklyn area of ​​Williamsburg, where a row of heat pumps will be installed in a glass dome above the old Domino sugar factory building, just behind the old chimney.
substantive law. The $370 billion climate, tax and health plan signed by President Biden on August 16 could have far-reaching environmental and economic implications. Here are some key terms:
Automotive industry. So far, taxpayers have been able to receive up to $7,500 in tax credits when purchasing electric vehicles, but there is a limit to the number of eligible vehicles per manufacturer. The new law will remove this cap and extend the tax break until 2032; used vehicles will also be eligible for a rebate of up to $4,000.
energy. The legislation will provide billions of dollars in rebates to Americans who buy energy-efficient appliances and appliances. Companies will receive tax incentives for the construction of new sources of environmentally friendly electricity. The package also includes $60 billion to encourage clean energy production and, starting in 2024, levying penalties for methane emissions that exceed federal limits.
healthcare. For the first time, Medicare will be allowed to negotiate the price of certain prescription drugs with drug manufacturers. The law also extends subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, which expires at the end of this year, for another three years.
Tax law. The law introduces a new corporate minimum tax of 15% on profits reported to shareholders by companies that have annual income of more than $1 billion but can use credits, deductions and other tax regimes to lower their effective tax rate. The legislation will support the IRS with an investment of about $80 billion.
low income communities. The package includes over $60 billion to support low-income and communities of color overwhelmed by climate change. These include grants and funding for zero-emission technologies to mitigate the negative impacts of highways and other vehicles.
Fossil fuel industry. The legislation requires the federal government to auction more public acreage for oil drilling and expand tax breaks for coal and gas-fired power plants that rely on carbon capture technology. These items are among the additions designed to win the support of Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia.
West Virginia. The legislation is expected to greatly benefit the state of Mr. Manchin, the second largest coal producer in the United States, turn the federal trust fund into a permanent federal trust fund to support black lung miners, and provide new incentives. for the construction of wind and solar power plants in coal-mining areas. Recently closed mines or coal plants.
Several cities, including Ithaca, New York, have passed laws requiring all old and new buildings to stop using oil and gas for heating or cooking within the next few years. Dozens of US cities have also passed laws banning new natural gas connections. This was followed by a counteroffensive funded by gas companies and local utilities to ban or prevent gas from being banned by local laws.
The climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Biden in August, provides rebates of up to $8,000 for homeowners who buy electric heat pumps and improve energy efficiency (including insulation and better windows). Many buildings will need to upgrade electrical panels for full electrification. There are also discounts. The bill also allocates $200 million to train workers to install new appliances and insulate homes.
But with the electrification of buildings, cars and buses, other problems are looming. One is to clean up the grid to cut down on fossil fuel consumption. As demand grows, utilities also need to produce more electricity.
Currently, New York City’s 24 power plants run primarily on methane and fuel oil, releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that pollute the nearby air. New York is aiming to be completely “clean energy” by 2040.
Mr. Baird said that if there was a city that could do that, it would be New York. It has the funding and the political consensus to take swift action on climate change. “New York is a test case, can you turn a building into a Tesla? Can you do it with a municipal mandate?” he said. “These are two really strategic questions.”
Across the Atlantic, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine changed the strategic calculation of power buildings.
The EU relies on natural gas for home heating, most of which comes from Russia. The European Commission is currently trying to phase out natural gas, partly doubling the installation of electric heat pumps by 2025, while also pushing for energy efficiency.
An independent analysis jointly conducted by four non-profit research groups recently concluded that building electrification could cut gas consumption by 25 billion cubic meters, or about one-sixth of all EU gas imports from the Kremlin.
Individual countries are taking their own measures. In Germany, heat pumps will become mandatory by 2024 and in the Netherlands by 2026. Austria this year completely banned the sale of new gas boilers. Leonora Gewessler, Russia’s climate minister, said in June: “Every gas water heater we phase out is a step away from our dependence on Russian gas.”
A heat pump works by drawing warm air out of a building when it is hot outside and drawing warm air into a building when it is cold outside. They have a bad reputation to overcome: older people are not very good at heating houses at very low temperatures. Their proponents say the technology has come a long way. The evidence also shows this. Some of the coldest places in the world have some of the highest electric heat pump penetration rates.
Consider Sweden. Winters there are very cold, and fossil fuels account for less than 5% of home heating. This transition took 50 years.
Sweden used oil to heat buildings. The oil crisis of the 1970s was the first turning point. Next was the carbon tax in 1991, which made heating oil more expensive by taxing carbon dioxide emissions.
Today, Sweden depends on district heating, with pipes transferring heat to apartment buildings. The heat comes mainly from the incineration of waste and biomass (there are environmental problems). Meanwhile, single-family homes mostly rely on heat pumps.
Sweden faces new challenges. As the country expands recycling, the amount of waste that can be burned could decrease and its buildings need to become more energy efficient.
Mr. Baird, a heat pump installer who worked with Ms. Nelson at Bed-Stuy, grew up in Brooklyn, then Atlanta and returned to Brooklyn after college. For years, his company has made money by connecting oil-dependent facilities, such as Ms. Nelson’s property, to the city’s gas grid. Gas pollutes the environment less than fuel oil.
The birth of his first child brought an epiphany. He realized that by connecting these buildings to natural gas, he helped prolong the city’s dependence on fossil fuels. “I thought, ‘Oh, when my kid is 35 years old and he’s my age, this pipeline that I just paid for is still there,’ he said.
In the meantime, two of his most prominent investors, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy, pushed him to go gas-free entirely.
It makes sense for business. Not only could it help 10,000 buildings in the city get rid of dirty heating oil and electrify, but tens of thousands of other buildings could also switch from gas-fired boilers to electric heat pumps.
He handed over the core business to Bloc Power. It is currently focused on electrifying churches, trendy apartments and apartment buildings in several cities across the country. Bloc Power is also training 1,000 underprivileged workers.
For Ms. Nelson, the transition to electric vehicles has not been a smooth one. It took the city much longer to issue permits than she had hoped. Now the equipment has been installed, but the pipes and wires have not been dismantled. The two cars in the backyard are huge. There she plans to build a patio.
In fact, space was a huge problem. In most high-rise buildings, there is not enough space to accommodate equipment. Developers of new buildings who want to switch completely to electricity will have to allocate expensive real estate to house the kit. Architects will have to find ways to reduce energy consumption. “It really put a lot of pressure on the design team to be more efficient,” said Hale Everetts, who is in charge of the new Two Trees building, which converted an old sugar mill into office space.
Currently, Mr. Byrd is irritated by Dorie Miller Cooperatives, a 300-unit housing cooperative in Queens, one of the first cooperatives where blacks in New York could buy their own homes. Like Ms. Nelson’s building at Bed Stay, the building struggled with old, inefficient, oil-burning boilers.
Cooperatives can be fined by the city if they replace their old oil-fired boilers with new ones. If he rents a new electrical kit from Bloc Power, the maintenance bills for his residents will skyrocket.
Cooperative board treasurer Michael De Valera worries about space. He wondered if the city would have power lines to meet all the new electricity needs. This is a test of whether and how new federal climate laws can help wean urban areas off fossil fuels.
At the moment, Mr. de Valera said, the plan is to replace the old oil-fired boilers with gas-fired ones, extending the building’s dependence on fossil fuels for another 40 years or so. “There is less work, less cost and less shareholder knowledge,” he said. “If you look at all of the above, our transition is going to be a bit slower.”