What’s the eco-friendly replacement for a furnace?

Nuclear

Its a heat pump, aka "an air conditioning system run in reverse". They're quite viable for new construction but they work best if you've got a decent heat sink/source such as geothermal energy from under your house.

Heat pumps just move energy from A to B. To be at their more efficient they need the temperature difference between the two to be as small as possible. The generic air conditioning unit just throws the heat out into the atmosphere through a radiator, that's the bit with the fan that makes all the noise. (The compressor that moves the heat is quite small, it also sits in the outside unit.) One problem we have in hot weather is that the area around the compressor gets very hot, up close to 50C, due to the system being in an enclosed side yard. This not only noticeably reduces the A/C's efficiency but also compromises reliability of the system (....and repairs are expensive). We have to manually intervene (i.e. open a gate to let the air flow) to make things work well.

Recycled mainframe. All that ECL will keep you nice and toasty.

Macbook Pro when Microsoft Teams is running.

Our 1971 home is fairly typical of a suburban California home. Built on the cheap it has a relatively modest electrical supply, a 100 Amp panel. The supply infrastructure isn't designed for anything more -- back when a relatively small tract of houses was built our supply became unstable with the substation constantly blowing up. (Literally...) Over the years we've reduced our power consumption substantially and installed solar panels which help with the spiraling cost of power (peak rate is close to 50c a KW/h now).

We use minimal amounts of natural gas for water heating and home heating in the winter. These are significant energy users that will strain our house's power supply. We might be able to upgrade the panel and the incoming main but the entire tract would need to be rewired. Since power costs have been allowed to get out of control -- we we next in line after the UK's 'privatization' with the whole ISO, energy market, spot prices and what-have-you, somewhat tamed by the state but still subject to those 'market forces' that you in the UK know and love so much -- I don't want to install anything that might add to power consumption except maybe an electric vehicle since that can be used to not only substitute for even more expensive gasoline (petrol -- we running $6 a gallon, sometimes lower, sometimes higher) but as a float for the house as a whole. so I guess the AQMD may find a lot of people in "cold, dead, fingers" mode -- we are not going to go down that route and any attempt to force the issue is likely to have devastating political consequences.

(The gas fire pictured in this article is unknown in the US. We actually have one, a Baxi "Bermuda" that my wife hand carried from the UK back in the days before everything was seen as a potential bomb. Due to historical reasons all the fittings and specifications for pressure, venting and the like are actually the same between the US and the UK. It is by far the most efficient heat source anyone knows of -- the fireplace is supposed to be burning artificial logs but that's an amazing way to burn a lot of gas to get not very much heat, but this one can heat an open plan house on one bar.)

Oh the irony

Our rural backwater doesn't have a gas pipeline so all our furnaces are electric

This means everyone's winter electricity use pushes us into the punitive eco-terrorist tariff once you go over a certain residential usage. Double irony cos all our power is hydro.

If you replaced that electric furnace with a heat pump you'd save a lot of energy. There are new ones that operate well below 0F/-20C (and even at the lowest temperatures it supports while it is less efficient it is still more efficient than the resistance heating you have now)

I've got an old gas furnace and AC in my house I've been thinking about replacing and I've been looking at heat pumps. We have lows below zero (F) maybe a half dozen nights in an average winter where I live. I figure if we get a real cold snap with a few days in a low in the minus teens and high a few degrees below zero and my heat pump couldn't quite keep up I'd be fine with that. Maybe my house is only 60F for a few days, I'd be fine with that versus paying more for one of the models able to handle down to -40C...I don't live in northern Minnesota!

Maybe my house is only 60F for a few days, I'd be fine with that versus paying more for one of the models able to handle down to -40C...I don't live in northern Minnesota!

This isn't progress, it's regression. Meanwhile, China continues to build 100 new coal-fired power stations per year.

https://time.com/6090732/china-coal-power-plants-emissions/

At some point you guys will face up to the fact that this is more about virtue-signalling than climate change. The question is, will it be too late?

Xi Jinping says nǐ hǎo!

Does this mean new construction homes, with fireplaces, will need scrubbers in their chimneys?

Or, maybe no fireplaces at all?

How about barbecues / smokers / outdoor firepits / tiki torches?

Churches might need a religious exemption to continue using candles and incense.

Actually at the moment there are widespread bans on barebecues in California already. Not statewide, it's a temporary measure due to fire risk in those areas though (the areas that already have forest fires don't need even more started due to hot coals.)

Oh, and the very bill this article is writing about is banning gas grills too! Yeah.

Ridiculous. Electric heating is much less efficient than gas and much higher per-therm costs; electric heaters take longer to come up to temperature and don't reach as high a temperature either. In cold climates (which southern california is not, but the northern-most part of california is), I'm not sure an electric furnace would keep up with the demands at all. (In Iowa, the only electric heat setups I've ever seen -- they're rare because the heating costs that way are insane in this cold a climate -- use a "radiator" in each room, just electric instead of steam, because central heating would not make enough BTUs to heat the whole house. Iowa has some of the lowest per-kwh costs in the country, it's like half what they pay in California.) The power draw for electric heat is quite high, they are seriously expecting people to get new (higher amp capacity) electrical service run to their house, bigger breaker panel/fuse box put in, and new wiring (at least to the heat) to accomodate the power draw of this electric heater?

That said, the sensible thing would be to pursue heat pumps. The newer ones do apparently provide adequate heat down to 10-20 fahrhenheit, like -10 celsius or so, provide both cooling and heating, are actually more efficient than a gas system, the "mini-splits" they use mean you can heat or cool the whole place evenly or save money by heating or cooling rooms you aren't using far less than the rest. Apparently (due to the mini-splits) they cool or heat quickly enough so you can keep a room relatively unheated/cooled and just crank it up when you DO get in the room. The one I saw even had some fancy system to detect when someone walked in and directly the heat/cooling in their direction. The systems allow installing a small furnace to pick up the slack so you're not frozen out of your home when it's like -40 out (-40 is the same in celsius and fahrenheit). I think it'd be FAR better for them to quit using the stick (gas furnaces are banned, if your furnace blows out and you don't have like $10,000+ banked up you're screwed) and start using the carrot (play up the advantages of newer systems, people who can afford too will do the upgrades.) (As martinusher points out above, this still is shifting huge BTUs of heating from gas to electric, without the electric infrastructure to support it.)

Also, California keeps pusihing for electric vehicles, and now electric heating; but, they ALSO have decided to not allow any new power generation in the state! OK, no gas power plants or nuclear reactors, that's consistent with their green policies; but, they've also turned down geothermal (they want to keep hot springs and tar pits in their natural state), wind (NIMBYs don't want to have to look at wind mills... even turning down an off-shore facility where they were going to be just barely visible above the horizon), and tide and wave power (I have no idea what the excuse was for this one.) Neighboring states have clearly said they don't mind having power generation in their states, but they (and the utility copmanies) are NOT going to foot the bill for running huge numbers of high-capacity power lines into California so they can go all-electric without producing any electricity.

Edit: 50c a kwh peak? Fuuuu..... I knew Iowa had some of the lowest rates in the country -- like 8-10c a kwh depending on what plan you're on and etc... but I didn't know it'd gotten THAT high out there. Even with heat pumps, they draw electricity rather than gas so I don't know if they are still enough more efficient to save when you're paying 50c a kwh!

I'm pretty sure they are requiring heat pumps, and not electric resistance heat. I agree it would be stupid if they banned gas heat and allowed electric resistance heat.

Yeah, but they aren't banning inefficient electric heating, and are banning efficient gas devices, not just inefficient ones. This is PG&E and Socal Edison creating a residential power monopoly. If you can't afford your own solar build, be prepared to pay through the nose for their surge price power though an unreliable, unmaintained, and overpriced grid.

"California said it plans to petition the EPA and call on the government to take its own actions"

If the EPA is to mandate new Californicated green love at the federal level that leaves doors open for companies to abuse other states. If California wants this, they should first attempt to annex themselves from the USA. New York city alone would be a nightmare.

*IF* this was on structures built after 2030, that would be 1 thing, but all furnaces... do Californians live in the real world?

We don't want it here either.

This is all about lobbying money spent by our fresh out of bankruptcy electrical utilities. PG&E and Edison want to knock out gas and liquid fuel sales to consumers to create a power monopoly. That is all this is about. The infiltrated CARB under the guise of green initiatives like solar and electric cars, but the voice of the lobbyists has been getting louder and louder.

The CA electrical is teetering on Texas or Puerto Rico levels of problems. There is no plan to "fix" the grid by 2030. There are no provisions in these rules to delay or cancel them if the grid isn't ready by then. They curtail residential use of gas as an environmental "EVIL" while ensuring that the power companies will then be the biggest consumers of natural gas. This is all a massive screwjob on the populace of California, and if it's not stopped, this will end badly.

Sadly our current Governor, one Gavin Newsom is very much in the pocket of these companies after the PG&E bailout. Instead of holding them to task and either taking over the state power grid when they defaulted or forcing them to address the issues, he looks the other way. Just in the last two months they have caused more wildfires, and were caught turning plants off during peak hours, creating rolling blackouts and triggering surge pricing. He isn't going to have the state running on 100% renewables by 2030, and we can't build any new nukes by then. Notice he has presidential ambitions, and all of this will kick in either after he leaves California or is out of office. Don't vote for him if he runs out of California. We should know better by now, but at least that is a self punishing crime.

Most of these operators are making their money off the generation of power, not the delivery. This move is about eliminating a competitor and forcing them to be a cut rate supplier. In homes, you can still cook on an efficient induction plate, or in a microwave without removing the gas service. In areas with cold weather, access to alternate heat during winter outages is LIFE SAVING. Mandate insulation upgrades before removing existing things like water heaters and furnaces. It will also pay dividends on the hot days.

Mandate the installation of efficient options, not the removal of them, and leave the residents to sort out which to use. I have a gas stove, but I cook 85% of my food on a stand alone electric plate. Banning my stove isn't saving much power, and making my landlord install proper insulation will cut my carbon footprint more than any other thing.

You can't trust these pirates, they literally are willing to kill people due to lack of maintenance. Once they cut out the competition, this will make Enron look like a picnic.

Europe and California are leading the charge to plunge their citizens back to the stone ages to solve a problem that does not exist. So sad to see so many people can believe a hoax so easily. Never underestimate the effectiveness of propaganda. Meanwhile, India and China's new emissions will offset any CO2 "savings" by many, many multiples.