Northeastern governors may ban home furnaces that burn oil in order to meet greenhouse gas emission limits.
The governors are expected to approve “a blueprint for slashing carbon dioxide from cars — and perhaps home furnaces — by January,” reports ClimateWire.
About half of Massachusetts 2 millions homes, for example, rely on oil heat. “Thousands of homes might have to replace oil furnaces with wood-burning heaters” or with heat from renewable electricity or natural gas, or upgrade furnaces to burning biofuels, ClimateWire reports.
New home furnaces cost between $3,000 to $5,000.
There would also be international trade implications from such a policy since about half of the region’s heating oil comes from Canadian tar sands.
Scratch wood-burning off the list. Several towns in Western Mass. have banned them, and as westhoustongeo pointed out they are not welcome except in truly rural areas.
I seem to recall that a decade or two ago, Denver had to limit wood-burning to counteract smog. So, your clean burning oil heater is scrapped and you go back to wood?
Best of luck with that, neighbors.
Can’t wait for that lawsuit. What constitutes good evidence that enforcing the regulations will reduce global warming. Should be epic.
If New Englanders let their leaders get away with this BS they deserve what they get.
No need for MA and others to act. It’s already in the Cap-and-tax bill. The bill mandates that the Sec of Eng will inspect every home bought and sold for compliance to energy standards. Each city and town will have inspectors who will perform the inspection/approval function. What are the standards? Nobody knows. Who will write the standards and what will they cost? Nobody knows. It could be that every home needs to change to electric heating/cooling regardless of current appliances. If a REAL greeny writes the regs he could shut down the housing industry and/or bankrupt millions of home owners with costly updates. Obama will probably appoint an unaccountable Czar to do this. I think we’re s*****.