> City carve-outs for gas cooking aren’t unreasonable, said Sara Baldwin, who works on electrifying the building sector at environmental policy firm Energy Innovation. But eventually, she believes that buildings will need to be fully electrified, including stovetops, to meet ambitious emissions-reduction goals, presenting an existential threat to the gas industry.
So it's not quite "blaming gas stoves for climate change". The claim is there's a need to transition away from gas stoves _as a consequence_ of getting rid of gas hookups (which are presumably mostly used for heat), which would have a noticeable impact on emissions.
Further driving that point home, the next sentence is:
> “The gas industry really wants to make the household stovetop a wedge issue and use that to animate people against electrification as a whole,” said Charlie Spatz, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center, an environmental advocacy group.
So they know that a storm is brewing over gas stoves, because there's inherent resistance _and_ there's an large industry trying to use/abuse that fact in order to preserve their profits.
To me, the reason the article focuses on gas cooking instead of gas hookups in general is for that exact reason. Gas cooking has a small impact on climate change, but the claim is it's a necessary sacrifice to get rid of the bigger problem of gas hookups and distribution, and it seems like it'll be a tough sell for opinionated people who are being amplified by a large industry trying to extract as much profit as possible on the way out. It could have spent more time on that claim that it's a necessary sacrifice though.
Agree that it should've spent more time on the claim that eliminating gas hookups is a necessary sacrifice. I'm also surprised there was no discussion around the personal cost impact of switching from gas to electric heat.
The emissions from gas heating are drastically higher than electric heating, and eliminating gas heating would absolutely have an impact on emissions. However, gas heating is significantly cheaper than electric heating, and I wish the article had spoken more about how environmental groups plan to deal with lower income residents switching from gas to electric. In Massachusetts, for example, a house that spends $1,200 in a winter on natural gas would spend over $6,000 on electric resistance heat (unless you have a newer electric heat pump, which is much closer to competing with the price of natural gas)
With a standard heat pump (excluding initial installation costs), costs should be appreciably lower than any other method, except when temperatures approach -20 or so (I may be wrong on that number, but I'm reasonably confident it's in the ballpark). And air conditioners are just reverse heat pumps, the same device can and should operate both as a heater and cooler.
I live in an area where those low temperatures occur seasonally, but heat pumps absolutely can improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions, even here, especially if tied to non-air-source heat pumps, or just massively increased renewable energy production (including base load sources like geothermal).
The capital/installation costs are the real problem, and it will take some toothy legislation and expenditure to get it done.
You are a bit off on that temperature. Heat pumps are efficient until around 30 degrees F [1]. Once in that range, they start requiring more energy to operate normally. But mostly anything below 30 degrees F needs a secondary heat source such as gas.
Where I live in Michigan, I could use a heat pump for some time in the fall and spring, but there's no way it would replace my gas furnace in the winter. I'd be curious to know if the cost of getting a heat pump would be worth it at that point.
Even with an air-source heat pump, as long as it's smart enough to defrost itself as appropriate, etc., you can definitely get a Coefficient of Performance greater than 1 even at below freezing outdoor temperatures. You could run it the majority of days even in winter, and while your current electricity prices may make it not competitive with current natural gas prices, it would be _efficient_. If natural gas externalities were priced in, it almost certainly would be cheaper to run a heat pump except when COP goes all the way down to 1, where yes, you would need an augmented/alternative heat source -- no denying that.
But if you have central air conditioning, which is pretty common in the Midwest, reverse operation is a heat pump. In practice, many A/C systems don't do that, but the capital cost between a central A/C only system and a central A/C + heat pump system is minimal. A/C + heat pump should really be the default, and supplemented or augmented for the few weeks when COP is too low, and for longer while the economics are the way they are.
One augmentation is that you can get non-air-source heat pumps. At least for buildings with several units, it _should_ be cost-effective to get a ground source -- just dig below the frost line. That's almost never something you can easily just hire a crew to do, so unfortunately it's not a practical suggestion right now, but if/when that market failure is dealt with, it'll be a good option for many, as you wouldn't need a secondary system.
Not trying to convince you to buy a heat pump by the way, the economics of it do matter a lot. I would like to sell people the efficiency argument though.
I left it implied, but the logic of getting rid of gas hookups altogether, instead of keeping them and using heat pumps for heating, is that the emissions purely due to the distribution network are non-trivial. That's the proximate reason the cooking transition is being proposed. It's also why it mentions that there's a reasonable argument for a carve-out for _cities_, where the distribution network would be more efficient than in rural areas.
> Humans have an impact on the planet. Deal with it.
> Some of the big ways we do are summarily ignored.
That is, ironically, the point of the article (not that it's perfect). Let's not summarily ignore the emissions from the gas distribution network, just because we're upset that cooking will change slightly. Deal with it, and don't let silly resentment towards an individual activist or cynical campaigns by massive carbon emitting industries fool you into doing otherwise.
Saying "deal with it" is not at all how I would communicate the issue to the average consumer, but you don't fit that description. Never mind that individual consumer choices like your own, summed across all individuals, have almost zero impact compared to systemic changes like those proposed in the article. I say this as someone very similar to you (vegan, bike/walk everywhere, use renewable energy, etc.).
Is there a large amount of natural gas to-home infrastructure outside of cities now? I suppose this will vary by region. The (admittedly, few) family members and friends I have who live rurally and use gas have propane tanks that are filled by truck, not buried gas pipes coming from the street.
If your point is that the primary argument _should_ be "deal with it" or that anything else is "manipulating people", I disagree with such a binary assertion.
> Literally don't care that houses in Malibu are going to fall into the sea because I love grilling up some salmon and asparagus over cold ones
Houses in Malibu fall into the sea because they are built in a coastal erosion zone, not because of your grilling - which can also be done over charcoal or propane, which don't have the huge issues of gas grid leaks and maintenance.
The problem is the global warming impact of the leaky natural gas grid, which has far more consequential impacts like damaged via sea level rise to the Gulf Coast, and the aridification of the Western US.
It's a systems problem that requires system solutions, not the problem of an individual's right to cook over a natural gas flame.
I can't see that being anything other than a very luxury item. Burning wood requires much better ventilation than most kitchens have. It's not easy to control the heat level, and the effort of using it is disproportionate for small amounts of cooking. And the fuel itself is cumbersome and takes up a lot of space.
> City carve-outs for gas cooking aren’t unreasonable, said Sara Baldwin, who works on electrifying the building sector at environmental policy firm Energy Innovation. But eventually, she believes that buildings will need to be fully electrified, including stovetops, to meet ambitious emissions-reduction goals, presenting an existential threat to the gas industry.
So it's not quite "blaming gas stoves for climate change". The claim is there's a need to transition away from gas stoves _as a consequence_ of getting rid of gas hookups (which are presumably mostly used for heat), which would have a noticeable impact on emissions.
Further driving that point home, the next sentence is:
> “The gas industry really wants to make the household stovetop a wedge issue and use that to animate people against electrification as a whole,” said Charlie Spatz, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center, an environmental advocacy group.
So they know that a storm is brewing over gas stoves, because there's inherent resistance _and_ there's an large industry trying to use/abuse that fact in order to preserve their profits.
To me, the reason the article focuses on gas cooking instead of gas hookups in general is for that exact reason. Gas cooking has a small impact on climate change, but the claim is it's a necessary sacrifice to get rid of the bigger problem of gas hookups and distribution, and it seems like it'll be a tough sell for opinionated people who are being amplified by a large industry trying to extract as much profit as possible on the way out. It could have spent more time on that claim that it's a necessary sacrifice though.