Well, it looks like it’s official. The NYS building code council voted to include the “All Electric Buildings Act” into the upcoming building code update. So, unless someone flinches, Jan 1, 2026 is the end of fossil fuel in new construction1. The good news is that Long Island is a good candidate for heat pump technology. The bad news is that your customers aren’t going to be happy with their lack of options, especially in the Hamptons where stretch codes are in effect and every little bit of efficiency counts.
Over the next couple of months, I’m hoping to spew out a few postings about going all electric. For now, I’m just going to try and touch on the obvious stuff. After a bit of pondering, I’ll come back with some more detail and maybe some math. Everybody loves math.
But first, some grumbling …
No matter what you may hear … electricity is NOT a zero-carbon fuel source. It’s not zero carbon; it’s not really even a fuel source. It could be carbon free, but right now it’s not. Why? Because we need to create it before we can use it and mostly … we create it with fossil fuels. Yes, we can use wind, solar and hydro to generate it but let’s face it… there isn’t any renewable generation sitting idle waiting for someone to turn on a light. Anytime you plug in something new … a natural gas power plant somewhere is going to spin up a little bit more to provide the electrons.
Author’s note: I don’t want anyone to think that I am “pro fossil-fuel”. I’m not. At the end of the day fossil fuels need to go and renewables will pick up the slack. We just aren’t there yet. There are limited resources (money mostly) to make this all happen, and I’d like to see it targeted at the things that will make the most sense now. Realistically, the equipment we install today will be in a landfill long before there are enough solar panels to power them.
How about this?… “Electricity is 100% efficient”. Nope, not really. Electricity needs to be created, transmitted and delivered. That part isn’t even close to efficient. Right now, the US grid is about 41% efficient3 (Long Island’s grid is worse). One kW of natural gas in, 0.4 kW of electricity out. That would be … not efficient. Sometimes the numbers are better, especially when there isn’t a lot of load on the grid, but we are talking about adding a massive amount of load to the grid… so you can see where this is going. Oh… and electricity ain’t cheap. A therm of natural gas is about $1.70 or so, the same amount of electricity is about $6.50. If you were put on the new time-of-day rate, it’s $12.80/therm during peak.2
< end rant >
Getting into the weeds… What are we looking at when we talk about electrification? Heat pumps for building heat, heat pumps for making hot water, electric stoves and clothes dryers and oh yeah … no more gas fireplaces. I have a lot more ranting to do about the last three, but it won’t help anything … so I’ll stick to discussing the first two.
Starting off with building heat. With Long Island’s climate … heat pumps work. A high efficiency heat pump (like the really-really expensive ones) will be more efficient and cost less to operate than heating with fuel oil or propane. It might also be more efficient than a natural gas unit, but they will be slightly more expensive to run. (Remember, our natural gas is cheap and electricity is expensive.)
At this point, someone is going to chime in about Geothermal. Yes, it’s more efficient AND cheaper than natural gas … but the tax incentives are gone for 2026 and I’d need to sell a kidney to cover the purchase price. Realistically, no one is going to recoup their initial outlay with their energy savings, but I guess that isn’t really the point. You don’t buy a Tesla to save money either so … why not.
Couple of downsides to heat pump heating systems: When the electricity is out, so is your heat. A small back-up generator can power up any fossil fuel heating system. Heck, mine will run plugged into the outlet on my truck’s dashboard. Powering up heat pump compressors? On large projects? That’s going to be a bit more of an undertaking and involve a hefty generator (with the fuel tank you thought you were getting rid of) and probably some load shedding technology to keep the generator smaller than your car.
Another downside? Only the highest efficiency equipment can play on HERS rated projects in the Hamptons. The old school “budget” scroll compressor units that still exist will end up running on resistance heat (remember the $6.50/therm part) whenever it’s cold out. Specifying an “Energy Star” model isn’t going to be good enough either for Hampton’s code. It will need to be a top-of-the-line model, or you’ll take a hit in energy cost and a big hit on your HERS index. Since you’re stuck with high-end models, electrification might not save any money on equipment either.
So how about domestic water heaters? This … is a trickier subject. Old school electric tank heaters are cheap to buy but expensive to run … and they trash your HERS index which in the Hamptons means you are adding solar PV to offset them.
On the other hand, heat pump water heaters (HPWH) are very efficient, but the recovery rate is awful. The compressor output of a typical 80-gal HP unit is about 4.2k btu (not kidding, 4200 btu) compared to 75,000 btu for a regular 75-gal gas water heater and 200,000+ btu for the coils on an 80-gal indirect. (an indirect’s input will pretty much match the output of your boiler) There is a resistance coil on HPWHs for “faster” recovery, but it’s still tiny and we are back to $6.50/therm.
With a HPWH you should assume that whatever you have in the tank is what you have for the day so … big storage is a must. For a “regular” house with a couple of low-flow showers, it should be fine. Designing a house with numerous baths or soaking tubs? Leave space for multiple water heaters.
My overall take on electrification? … I’m not thrilled, but it’s not the end of the world either. Oh, and … by the way … the new 2025 energy code comes out at the same time. Lots of new requirements and a whole new rewrite on how the energy code is put together. It’s going to take a while to figure this all out.
Expect more from me soon on shortening the learning curve.
Tom
- https://nyassembly.gov/all-electric-buildings/
- Electric rates are from the PSEG website. For the gas rate, I did the math on my monthly gas bill. It’s a reasonably close approximation.
- From eia.gov/totalenergy/