HVAC fresh take: NYC natural gas ban by Bill Kerrane, President, MWSK Equipment
The demand for innovation, education and installation of heat pump technology has become more important than ever with New York City’s recent adoption of Int. 2317-2021. With it, the New York City Council has effectively banned natural gas combustion as a fuel source for heat energy in building construction, beginning as early as 2023. To accompany the bill, the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability will be required to conduct two studies: (1) a study of the natural gas ban’s impact on New York City’s electrical grid, and (2) a study regarding the use of heat pump technology as an immediate alternative.
What is critical to understand regarding the pivotal role heat pumps will play in terms of implementing this new gas ban policy is that contrary to a furnace boiler or hot water storage tank, heat pumps do not generate heat. They instead move heat from a source (air or water) to indoor air and vice versa. Applying the natural and physical properties of heat transfer and its inclination to move towards areas with lower temperatures and less pressure, a heat pump system delivers controlled energy transfer through a refrigerant’s absorption and rejection of heat in a pressurized vacuum piping system, all via an air or water medium of exchange.
The history and theory of heat pump technology dates back more than 150 years, although reliance on cheap fossil fuels stifled its widespread application until after the Second World War and following the 1970s OPEC oil crisis. Engineering will now return its sights to heat pump technology with renewed fervor as the New York State Assembly adopts legislation to phase out fossil fuel combustion in new construction while expediting decarbonization through building electrification.
Proponents of NYC’s natural gas ban are celebrating a historic step toward carbon neutrality, pointing to research on air pollution and land use controls as motivating factors and legal pathways for the change. Opponents of the bill, conversely, anticipate the increased energy burden on low- and middle-income consumers and signal the current fragility of our electric grid. The grid itself is powered by fossil fuel combustion and must adapt to the newly placed demand of the bill to “electrify everything.” By rule of New York State’s revised Clean Energy Standard, a 10 percent carbon-free electricity requirement from both renewable source and nuclear energy must be achieved by 2040. However, this is no easy feat due in part to New York being the sixth-largest natural gas consumer and the fifth-largest consumer of petroleum among the states, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2019 estimates.
Regardless of the scales weighing heavily on both sides of the argument regarding this policy change, New York City will be the one of the first major urban American landscapes to manage the natural gas ban in a geographically cold winter climate. This fact alone should stimulate growing interest in the pipeline of heat pump technology, whereby homegrown manufacturers are developing air-cooled “chiller-heater” products that are able to produce 140-degree domestic hot water by extracting heat from below freezing outdoor air temperatures.
Geothermal, or ground source heat pumps, are also gaining wide acceptance for both residential and commercial buildings. This specific type of heat pump application design relies on the fact that relatively constant temperatures exist beneath the earth’s surface, yielding warmer temperatures than the air above it during the winter and cooler temperatures in the summer. The geothermal heat pump enables the transfer of heat stored in the earth (or in-ground water) to and from any building construct. Essentially, with the use of this application, the earth becomes a heat source in winter and a heat sink in summer, as a series of connecting pipes buried underground exist to circulate fluid in a continuous “loop” between the earth, the heat pump and the rest of the building. The fluid (water, or a mixture of water and glycol) either absorbs or relinquishes heat as it travels underground and back to the geothermal heat pump, to then be distributed further based on the building’s demands. This integration with an earth connection subsystem is yet another means by which building construction and design is able to concentrate naturally existing heat from our environment rather than by producing heat through the combustion of fossil fuels.
Beyond these major developments, water source heat pump technology has witnessed improved modulating controls for dehumidification and VAV applications in recent years. Broadly speaking, a water source heat pump system also offers significantly less overall refrigerant gas charge conditions compared to rival alternative designs (Variable Refrigerant Flow systems). All of these factors contribute to the bright horizon upcoming for our industry’s heat pump applications in the near future, which the New York City Council may well recognize in its upcoming study.
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