Dear City Council,
I am very concerned about the Menlo Park City Council advancing plans to require replacement of gas appliances by 2030 as described in the Palo Alto Post. The city council needs to abandon this drastic proposal.
Doing this will have a negative impact on the environment. The PhD energy experts I have spoken with say that this is likely to result in more CO2 in the atmosphere than staying with gas appliances. With California’s abandonment of nuclear power plants, our ‘clean energy’ resources do not meet our current needs so we import much of our electricity from out of state, much it from power coal-fired plants in New Mexico. We’d be replacing our gas stoves and furnaces with coal-powered ones.
The individual homeowner’s costs will be huge. Monthly utility bills will go up because electricity is much more expensive than natural gas. Even larger is the cost of replacing working appliances with appliances that have different power requirements and often require different ducting. These costs include the cost of the new appliances plus the costs for new ducting, upgrading electrical capacity, patching or replacing floors and walls where ducting has changed, patching or replacing countertops and cabinets and other areas where the new appliances do not fit. Have these additional costs been considered? It’s a lot. In addition will PG&E have to upgrade transmission lines to support the additional demand?
Natural gas heating and cooking is more reliable than electricity. Our electricity has gone out many times while we have lived in Menlo Park while our gas supply has never gone out. And we are lucky here. Just a few weeks ago the entire North Bay had their electricity cut for half a day due to concerns about possible fires from electric lines.
Gas works better than electricity for many tasks. The instantaneous response of gas cooking and heating is so much better than the slow response of electricity.
Americans like to make their own decisions about how they live their lives. Why should five people on our City Council (of which we can only vote for one) determine whether an individual needs a new furnace? Perhaps the City Council should have some real engineers study the problem and publish a pro and con document regarding electric vs gas. Then allow us to make up our own minds. Those who want to convert should be free to do so. But let’s not force people to make dumb decisions.
Thank you for listening,
Anita Ochieano
1795 Stanford Avenue
650 325-9698
baochieano@gmail.com
