Debate of the night: Gas or Electric?

[carynb]

There are aspects to this whole "building a new place" thing that are really hard to figure out, y'know? M & I got into quite the discussion, last night, on the Gas or Electric debate. The furnace and fireplace are going to be natural gas, and I'm planning on having a natural gas line run for a BBQ, too, but I balk on doing the same for the stove and the dryer.

A gas stove cooks quicker and hotter, and having a gas stove also means always being able to cook during a blackout (as does the gas BBQ, I guess). Gas prices, are to me, however, a lot more uncertain that electricity prices. Gas is more efficient, and possibly cheaper in the long run - but is it better environmentally? Besides, gas just makes me uneasy. That, I know, is crazy - the gas is there, already, for the furnace, the fireplace, and the BBQ. But gas burners means the possibility of simple carelessness causing a fire, and that doesn't happen - as much, anyway - with electric. I'm seriously waffling on the gas stove, but I'm starting to think it's likely that's the way I'll go.

Then, we got into it about a gas clothes dryer. I really, really don't want to run gas to the second floor of the house. It's bad enough that I'm running it to the first floor. And that comes down to straight fear, I know. A gas dryer would cost a little more, up front, but it seems to be much more efficient.

How unreasonable is that fear? I keep having visions of my nice new house exploding into a fireball because I've made some silly little mistake. CO monitors will be installed, so I'm not really worried about us dying in our sleep because of carbon monoxide poisoning. My real concerns are fire, and long-term costs, both to my pocketbook and to the environment. Anybody know of some good, impartial research on the true efficiency of gas vs. electric for appliances? I found one guy who'd done the math on the difference for dryers, and I've saved a copy of his spreadsheet to fill it in with local utility figures, but I have no idea how good his assumptions are.

Comments

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

Gas is not "clean" but it is usually cleaner. On the one hand, smelly coal is burnt at Nanticoke, used to power steam turbines that generate electricity rather inefficiently, which is then sent through high-voltage wires, with some entropic loss, until it gets to you. Methane is still a hydrocarbon fuel, but it does generate the least carbon dioxide and no other nasty pollutants. Gas is a byproduct of oil mining (moreso at the Tar Sands); it's very hard to store long-term, so in places where it is produced in surplus, like Canada, if people don't buy it, the excess just gets burned or vented anyway.

Nuclear power is in some ways much cleaner, but it has huge incidental capital costs (i.e. you end up paying for it in tax dollars), safety concerns cause plant shutdowns, and the construction cycle is so long-term that new power demands can't translate to increased nuclear power production, so new energy needs mean more coal being burned.