Thank you @GavinNewsom for singing my bill to ban the sale of gas powered leaf blowers & other small engine equipment beginning in 2024! This equipment is dangerous to the workers who use it, disruptive to communities, & terribly damaging to our climate 🌎 https://t.co/MpyOnuXfwm
— Marc Berman (@AsmMarcBerman) October 10, 2021
From the article in the Tweet:
California will outlaw the sale of new gas-powered lawn mowers, leaf blowers and chain saws as early as 2024 under a new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday.
The law requires all newly sold small-motor equipment primarily used for landscaping to be zero-emission — essentially to be battery operated or plug-in — by that target date or as soon as the California Air Resources Board determined it is feasible. New portable gas-powered generators also must be zero-emissions by 2028, which also could be delayed at the discretion of the state agency.
Machinery with so-called small off-road engines also includes chain saws, weed trimmers and golf carts, all of which create as much smog-causing pollution in California as light-duty passenger cars, and reducing those emissions is pivotal to improving air quality and combating climate change, proponents of the law said.
Quick side question: I’m just a simple engineer so how does one make a zero emissions gas powered generator?
I have a whole bunch of Dewalt Li-ion tools. They are great. But they are expensive. It takes a couple of 5 amp hour batteries to string trim my yard. Those things take a while to charge and they are not cheap.
I want want of the 60v Flexvolt chainsaws. They are nice but also not cheap, and the batteries will set you back a pretty penny. They are $150 per battery.
So imagine a lawn service person with a chainsaw, string trimmer, leaf blowers, etc that are all twice as expensive as the equivalent gas model and running a few thousand in batteries that have to be repeatedly charged in between jobs on a zero emissions generator.
Andrew Bray, vice president of government relations for the National Assn. of Landscape Professionals said the zero-emission commercial grade equipment landscapers use is also prohibitively expensive and less efficient than the existing gas-powered lawn mowers, leaf blowers and other small machinery. For example, a gas-powered commercial riding lawn mower costs between $7,000 and $11,000, while its zero-emissions equivalent costs more than twice that amount, he said.
Another major expense will be batteries. Bray said a three-person landscaping crew will need to carry 30 to 40 fully charged batteries to power its equipment during a full day’s work.
“These companies are going to have to completely retrofit their entire workshops to be able to handle this massive change in voltage so they’re going to be charged every day,” Bray said.
Costs will go up.
Just for good measure, let’s throw in HOA rules that require yard maintenance.
The home owner will now pay double or more for the same yard service to be done zero emissions.
Will home owners respond by cutting back on service? Bi-weekly instead of weekly?
How many jobs will this cost?
Why not harm an entire industry with this law? California has ruined just about everything else, ruin yard men too.
And the enviro wackos out there already can’t keep the power grid up to avoid brownouts. So this should really help, too. Good grief, what fools. They know they will destroy huge sectors of the economy and it’s just fine with them. They think THEIR jobs are safe.
This is one of my hot button issues since this is my industry. The mowers I use are Hustler Hyperdrives. These bastards convert 2-3 gals/hr of fuel to work. They have 37hp engines, that’s 27.6 kwh of energy, every hour all day. That’s 75% of the average household in my state. How the hell are you going to store over 200 kwh in a battery that’s less than the weight of the truck towing it?
As was pointed out, they don’t have the grid to support it. They have already told the tools that bought zero emission EV cars they aren’t allowed to charge them.
And they all seem to think that the power that shows up at the outlet is zero emission…
This goes to a pattern I’ve seen in California for a while. Namely, they think they can outsource all the dirty details.
Not enough electricity? Buy some from neighboring states.
Not enough food? Same.
And so on. It hasn’t dawned on them yet that there comes a time when those outside sources say, ‘Sorry, not for sale’.
https://www.acehardware.com/departments/lawn-and-garden/lawn-mowers/push-mowers/7006244?x429=true&gclid=Cj0KCQjwwY-LBhD6ARIsACvT72P3w35ej1Ig56dzPeM0uCLtr242CwubbHQrySYdG3MxPZ2lIhXiWYYaAlKgEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
Go back to old school. No power tools at all. The old manual rotating blades mower. Little hand shears for edging.
Also, those 30-40 very expensive batteries? Those generally have a limited number of cycles, so expect to replace those on a regular basis.
I used a reel mover back in my youth. My dad also had hand shears and one of those flat-bladed swinging grass cutters, but that was too scary. 😮
We had a reel mower too, which the kids (me and my sisters) pushed. And one day we got back from 4 week vacation to find foot-tall lawn; that’s when my father borrowed a scythe to cut it to size. He was old enough to know how, and for some reason he didn’t bother teaching us. I wonder why not, it would have been typical for him to do that. Scary? Meh.
People pay lawn care services because the expense is offset by the personal time not spent in the endeavor. If the cost goes up, that math won’t work out any more for a lot of people and they’ll stop paying for lawn care and do it themselves.
From what I read, the law (for now) only outlaws sales of new gas powered equipment. That means lots and lots of market in California for second-hand gas powered equipment…and I’d bet Nevada and Oregon Lowes and Home depots will see a dramatic uptick in sales of such equipment.
Of course we all know how this goes. When the current law doesn’t have the desired effect, they’ll tighten the screws until 12 year old kids are being arrested for mowing their 80 year old neighbor’s lawn with a gas mower.
“People pay lawn care services because the expense is offset by the personal time not spent in the endeavor. If the cost goes up, that math won’t work out any more for a lot of people and they’ll stop paying for lawn care and do it themselves.”
That is where I’m at with my own lawn service. For what they charge coupled with how (in)frequently they manage to come and the declining quality of the job they do, I’m cutting them all loose at the end of this contract.
Even with having to upgrade/acquire equipment (buying a cheapo used 42-46” rider) and factoring in my time and additional expenses, I’ll break even in 6-8 months. Bonus for me in a year or so my parents are going to move off the old homestead and have already said one of the zero turns is mine if I want it when they offload their stuff.
With the huge price difference and how infrequently they will need to purchase new equipment I see a lot of lawn services making an annual trip out of state to buy equipment. That and keeping existing equipment longer.
Then again when they see this doesn’t work I would not be surprised if there was an outright ban on gas powered lawn mowers/blowers/etc.
Did anyone notice the typo in the OP?
Now I’m imagining Newsome _singing_ the bill. 😆
Huh, lawn care in CA. What demographic is this going to inordinately effect?
Customer side? corporations, rich folk, and others that never see their bills. They will pay whatever is charged.
Supply side? Whatever Demographic that is pouring over the southern border and wants unskilled jobs.
This is part of the retaliation for even attempting a recall, even if he owns all the polling locations and can stuff the ballots with a unlimited number of home made ballots. How dare the surfs think they get a choice.