How Natural Gas Bans Would Hurt Electric Reliability in California
Image courtesy of Jukka Isokoski under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License, resized to 700 x 391 pixels.
Various cities and states across the U.S. have been working hard launching natural gas bans in recent years. These prohibitions typically aim to prevent or discourage builders from piping natural gas into the new homes and businesses they develop.
In 2019, Berkely, CA was the first city to ban natural gas. Since then, a period of time spanning about 3 years as of the time of this writing, another 40 California communities have followed suit. Still, over 85% of homes in California use natural gas, which begs the question – what will the impact of a reduction in residential natural gas usage be on the reliability of the power grid?
The Downside of Natural Gas Bans
If, for example, half of California’s natural gas households are converted to electricity, demand would skyrocket. This would obviously put the reliability of the state’s grid at risk. Not helping matters is the impact of climate change, which has increased the frequency and severity of wildfires and heat waves and has also created drought conditions that negatively impact hydropower capacity.
Additionally, the cost of electricity can be quadruple that of natural gas, so these policies will stretch residents? pocket linings as well. This is particularly true in California, which has an 18.1% poverty rate, equating to 7 million people. Simply put, California has some of the highest electricity rates in the entire country – a whopping 68% above the national average!
And California is not the only state that is rolling out natural gas bans. Washington, Colorado, New York, Virginia, and several other states have either rolled out their own natural gas bans or are having similar policy discussions.
I know natural gas creates methane leaks that hurt the environment, not to mention the occasional news story we’ve all seen with a house exploding due to a gas leak, but as a country we really have to toe the line on this. Too many natural gas bans will tip the reliability scales too far, which will only spell trouble down the line.
