Heat Pumps for Peace and Freedom
President Biden should immediately invoke the Defense Production Act to get American manufacturers to start producing electric heat pumps in quantity, so we can ship them to Europe where they can be installed in time to dramatically lessen Putin’s power. The most recent estimates from Europe I’ve seen is that the current electric grid could handle fifty million heat pumps. We’re not going to get that many over there in a year—but any large number hacks away at Putin’s power.
Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 2/27/2022
The hidden dangers lurking in your kitchen
Cooking might be the way to someone’s heart, but it could also be the way to hospital. The number of accidents involving knives, boiling water, and deep-fat fryers is truly impressive. More than 67,000 children alone are injured in the kitchen in the UK every year, according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, and that doesn’t include those adults who decide to deep-fry a whole chicken or put the bagel knife through their finger.
By Veronique Greenwood, Future, 3/8/2022
Here’s the first U.S. city to swap gas and oil for all-electric buildings, on the path to zero carbon emissions
Ithaca, the upstate New York city of about 30,000, known for Cornell University and the natural beauty of its gorges, will be the first in the country to try to decarbonize every last one of its buildings by switching to electric power.
Decarbonization, or eliminating all heat-trapping carbon emissions generated by fossil fuels, will be funded through private investment, grants and rebates. The conversion takes on everything from how a building is heated — pushing heat pumps over natural gas and heating oil — to how appliances run.
Ithaca has some 6,000 commercial buildings, multifamily and single-family homes, schools, government facilities and more. The existing energy code in the city already bans natural-gas hookups in new construction and major renovations; similar rules are in place in California.
Market Watch
By Rachel Koning Beals, 11/4/2021
Natural Gas - Maybe Not So Clean and Wholesome After All
“In particular, natural gas is correlated with an increase in asthma symptoms in children. Asthma is an insidious illness which can strike a person at any time, limiting many people in their recreation.”
The Corvallis Advocate
By John M. Burt, 4/7/2022
These batteries work from home….
“We also see potential increased adoption of electric vehicles and even heat pumps for replacing gas furnaces,” Dharik Mallapragada, a research scientist at MIT’s Energy Initiative, told Recode. “Batteries can come in handy there because they can basically shift consumption … in terms of how much you’re drawing from the grid.”
Vox Recode
By Rebecca Heilweil May 5, 2022, 8:30am EDT