But NF3 will not be a problem, as Eli Rabett has pointed, since it is destroyed during use.

http://rabett.blogspot.com/ 2008/ 07/ eli-calls-rabett-droppings-well.html

One place I saw this (others too but can’t find at moment) is Environmental Building News – a great industry newsletter out of Brattleboro VT. Although they may be overstating the issue in some way I do think that many of the poor will heat just a single room and space heaters will accommodate that very easily – if also becoming a much greater fire hazard.

Here are a couple of long quotes to get the idea of it:

“Get Ready for Fuel Switching –
In regions of the country that rely primarily on heating oil or propane for heat, including the Northeast and parts of the Upper Midwest, something pretty surprising has happened over the past six months. The cost of delivered heat from these fuels has risen above that of electricity—even when that electricity is used for electric-resistance heating in baseboard radiators. (For more on comparing fuel costs, see the BackPage Primer.) Electric-resistance heat can sometimes be cheaper than even natural gas, particularly for buildings with old furnaces and leaky, poorly insulated ducts. If a heat pump is used to double or triple the efficiency of electric heating, heating with electricity is almost always cheaper than using natural gas, oil, or propane (though purchasing and installing a heat pump is expensive)….”

“To further complicate matters, the amount of usable heat we get from a fuel also depends both on the efficiency of a given heating device and on how efficiently that heat is distributed to the conditioned space. The efficiency of combustion appliances varies widely, from a low of about 40% for older woodstoves to over 95% for condensing gas furnaces. Electric-resistance baseboard heaters are 100% efficient, while heat pumps, which use electricity to move heat from one place to another instead of converting the electricity directly into heat, range in efficiency from 200% to over 300%. (These numbers don’t account for the “upsteam” energy costs of fuel production, nor do they begin to account for environmental costs—which are pretty significant with some forms of electricity generation.)…”

“Will you save money by switching to another fuel source? If you heat with a standard gas furnace (ducting assumptions as above) and spend $1.65/therm for the natural gas, you’re spending about $33.05 per million Btu (MMBtu) for heat. That’s about the same cost as electric baseboard heat at 11¢/kWh ($32.23/MMBtu), so you’d save money by switching to electric baseboard heating as long as your electricity price is no higher than 11¢/kWh. (You could also improve the cost-effectiveness of gas heating by improving the efficiency of your furnace or heat-distribution system.) Similarly, you could switch from gas to wood pellets and still save money as long as the price of pellets is below $350 per ton (which is significantly higher than today’s going price). These changes don’t factor in the cost of the new heating system….”

That is hard to believe. The price of electricity in Massachusetts is 15.45 cents per kWh. That is 42.92 per giga joule. The price of crude oil is 140 per barrel. There are 6.119 GJ/barrel, so that is 23 per GJ. A decent furnace should turn heating oil into heat at fairly high efficiency. Heating oil is not as valuable as crude oil, so this would suggest that the only way this makes sense is if space heaters are being used very selectively instead of heating an entire house.

It does indicate that an electric heat pump with a high COP might be closing in on the cost of heating with oil. I don’t know the price or GJ/gallon of heating oil, so I cannot do that calculation.

That is the beauty of the way Congress wrote the Clean Air Act, as affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2007. Any greenhouse pollutant can be regulated by the EPA if it poses a threat.

I’d only add that it’s important for government to regulate ALL (man-made) ghgs.

To tie to Greg N.’s comment – even if regulations are minimal they could have big impact if placed on point of manufacture/ energy production, far upstream from consumers.

To go on a bit: I think ALL ghgs need to be addressed/regulated because ( like my overly exhaustive Checklist Toward Zero Carbon. http://www.checklisttowardzerocarbon.wordpress.com – shameless plug.) for society to get how fundamentally we need to change nothing should be given a pass – so that one may be submerged in the ramifications, to re-emerge with a new world view…That’s not meant to sound new-agey.

One more thing, slightly off topic: As I propose that ALL ghgs need to be addressed, no matter the magnitude – while it may betray some willful ignorance – I don’t honestly understand why natural gas is “off the table”. It accounts for 25% of ghg emissions. Yes, it’s much more efficient than coal – but so what. If we can’t keep oil in the ground I think we should push for both a coal AND natural gas extraction moratorium. Sure it’s “unrealistic” – but let’s push for 11 and maybe we can get a 9?

Interestingly, I’m hearing more and more that folks in NE (poor or on fixed-income) will switch from using heating oil to elec power (space heaters) – as it will be cheaper. I’ve started to think that it would be more “green” for me to change my stove to electric and my home heating from gas to electric – as we buy wind power generated electric via ConEd Solutions.
I need to do some investigating on that….Perhaps a post of some sort for another day….

The best answer for consumers is for the government to get companies to clean up their products. Consumer boycotts don’t work well, because often there is no alternative. A regulation makes every product an alternative. Look at what happened when the EU decided that it was no longer OK to put toxics in cosmetics. The companies removed them pronto, in the EU (US cosmetics are still toxic–essentially unregulated–some even have lead). The same thing with children’s toys and lead and phthalates. There are factories in China that make products for the EU, and ones in the next town that make them for the US. When EU inspectors reject a batch that come from the wrong factory, they just send them to the US. Given that alternatives are available, it is disgusting that we do nothing to have high standards. See Mark Schapiro’s Exposed.

So my conclusion: a little regulation and you needed face such terrible withdrawal symptoms!

I’ll pledge this: to drastically reduce my computer replacement rate….. (we’re doomed?)

It does seem – which I now realize I neglected to spell out – that it should be a pretty straightforward process to capture all the NF3 used in manufacturing. However for this to be happen we probably need very stringent international laws/regulations.

Yet, for so many environmental impact reasons – best to use our existing computers until they’re dead, dead, dead….

50 tonnes/year emissions * 60 (growth) * 17000 (CO2 equivalent over 100 year horizon) ~= 1% * US annual CO2 emissions.

So, if it grows to 60x the current emissions then on a 100 year timeframe it will contribute 1% of the current US AGW forcing from CO2.

Personally, If I ever get around to upgrading to an HD flat-screen from my behemoth of a rear projection sony, I won’t be worried at all about the GHG effects of the NF3 used to produce it.