Do you recommend natural gas appliances over electric ones?
No matter how you sing the song, fossil fuels are no gas, gas, gas. So while burning natural gas spits out way fewer emissions than petroleum or coal, it’s far from saintly.
Drilling for gas disrupts wildlife. Processing it churns out polluting sulphur dioxide and sour gas. Burning it releases big baddies like climate-?changing CO2 and smog-?inducing nitrogen oxides.
So wherever an NG drill or pipeline is planned, enviro or First Nations protesters are pretty much guaranteed to follow.
Just ask Alberta’s Lubicon Nation. They’ve been fighting TransCanada Corp to keep a 300-kilometre pipeline from cutting through their traditional lands just to feed energy-?hungry tar sands refineries. Outraged native and green groups persuaded the Union of British Columbia Municipalities to ask the province last year to suspend Shell Canada’s natural gas exploration in the remote Klappan Valley area.
Pipeline politics are getting particularly tense around EnCana’s natural gas line in BC. Just a couple of weeks back, the pipeline was sabotaged for the sixth time in nine months.
Oh, and thanks to thawing ice caps, these kinds of conflicts could be moving northward now that scientists have concluded that 30 per cent of the world’s untapped natural gas deposits lie beneath the Arctic. Considering that natural gas is first in line to replace declining oil supplies, expect those reserves to be drained of gas in no time.
Nevertheless, natural gas is still considered by far the cleanest fossil fuel. That explains why the natural-?gas-powered Honda Civic GX (unfortunately unavailable in Canada), still beats the Prius as the greenest car, according to the peeps behind Greenercar.org. It’s also why the 50 per cent of homes heated with natural gas are considered much greener than those staying toasty with coal-?fired electric or oil furnaces.
So should you invest in natural gas appliances? You betcha, especially if you live in a coal-heavy province like Ontario. The discussion gets a little murkier in hydro-heavy regions, where you’re pitting natural gas’s total emissions against those created from the decaying flooded lands around major dams.
Generally, natural gas appliances are more efficient than electric, too. Natural gas stoves are three times more efficient at cooking your dinner than electric. Natural gas dryers actually dry your clothes in less time. Natural-gas-?run air conditioning (very hard to find in Canada) is said to suck back 30 to 50 per cent less energy than plug-?ins.
Gas-?fired tankless hot water heaters generally put out more water per minute than cheaper electric models, making them better for families. (Just make sure to pick one with an electric ignition device so you don’t waste energy keeping a pilot light on.) FYI: they’re also the only tankless heaters that will score you $500 in federal and provincial rebates through the ecoEnergy program.
Of course just because appliance X swallows less energy than appliance Y doesn’t mean you should be cranking the bleep out of that baby.
Case in point, that natural gas dryer we were eyeing earlier. You’re still wasting a lot of hot air roasting your jeans, no matter how you toss it. You’d be better off not turning that dryer on at all and using your handy solar dryer (aka clothesline) instead.
And since the difference in energy efficiency between dryers is pretty nominal, as with stoves, Energy Star doesn’t bother certifying them.
Whatever appliance you buy, be sure to compare EnerGuide stickers. They tell you how much power each machine uses in an average year in an average household. In the case of clothes dryers, the most efficient one found in a local Sears store consumes about 898 KWh per year, the least efficient 950 KWh.
Until we all shift over to fossil-?fuel-free living and run our homes on wind, solar, earth and maybe cow-poop energy, natural gas might be the closest we can get in the short term to cleaner fuel.
Let’s just make sure we don’t get stuck in a gassy long-term rut.
Got a question? Send your green queries to: ecoholic@nowtoronto.com
