Matt Bruenig, founder of People’s Policy Project and husband to Washington Post columnist Elizabeth Bruenig, recently ignited a firestorm over gas stoves, tweeting, “People who insist on using gas stoves are engaged in the same kind of culture/identity performance as people who insist on rolling coal in their giant diesel truck. You can cook food and get around fine with electricity, but that's not what it's about.”
Cooking with gas stoves is performative art? This guy must be clueless how electric stoves are powered. (Hint: it’s ironically mentioned in his tweet.)
Here’s why calls to ban gas stoves always fall flat.
It’s Unsustainable to Ban Gas Stoves
Between 2019 and 2020, mainstream outlets posited Americans should ditch gas stoves to mitigate climate change.
NPR dabbled in the following: “Give Up Your Gas Stove To Save The Planet? Banning Gas Is The Next Climate Push.” Reuters similarly ran a story titled, “The next target in the climate-change debate: your gas stove.”
Last October, The Atlantic argued “Kill Your Gas Stove:”
Cooking over a fire may seem natural enough, but these stoves should be a hotter topic: Given advances in induction technology, concerns about the climate, health anxieties, or some combination of the three, should anyone be using one?
If you can afford to avoid it, probably not.
The author, however, concedes, “While electric stoves don’t release the equivalent of car exhaust into your home, they do consume more total energy than gas stoves, which can make them a pricier option, depending on your local gas prices.”
Oops.
Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) president Zilvinas Silenas, writing in the Washington Examiner, responded, “An outright blanket ban on natural gas in homes, especially if extended throughout the country, would make little environmental sense — and no economic sense.”
Stop Shaming Gas Stove Users
Last year, Mother Jones tried to scorch social media influencers who partner with gas companies.
“The gas cooking Insta–trend is no accident. It’s the result of a carefully orchestrated campaign dreamed up by marketers for representatives with the American Gas Association and American Public Gas Association, two trade groups that draw their funding from a mix of investor- and publicly owned utilities,” the publication noted.
It gets better. They added:
What the polished posts don’t mention is that those perfectly charred tacos and fast weeknight meals come at a steep price: Gas stoves expose tens of millions of people in the United States to levels of pollution so high that they would be considered illegal outdoors. Counting on the allure of Instagram stars to help fend off alternatives backed by environmentalists, the gas industry doesn’t want you to realize how much its paid marketing has influenced public thinking that gas stoves are stylish, innocuous, and necessary home appliances. To the contrary, lifestyle bloggers are building their healthy, clean-living brands on one of the most dangerous home appliances on the market.
Uproarious.
Gas vs. Electric Stoves: Testing Efficiency
If you compare and contrast gas stove tops with electric ones, here’s how they match up.
Gas-powered stove tops are cheaper and offer better temperature control than their electric counterparts. Moreover, natural gas emits less CO2.
...natural gas emits 117 pounds of CO2 to make a million BTUs of heat, while the US national average for generating electricity is 401.5 pounds of CO2 per million BTU.
While the majority of homes use electric stove tops for cooking, per the most recent U.S. Energy Information Agency findings, many still cling to gas stove stops—including professional chefs.
Why? There’s better response time, easier control, greater cookware usability, ease for cleaning and overall maintenance.
Gas stoves also withstand power outages. One Slate writer confessed this following the recent Texas storm:
Advocates of switching from gas—who, I must reiterate, are correct on so many points—have another hurdle to clear, and one that’s been thrown into frigid relief by the winter storm crisis currently gripping Texas and much of the American South and Midwest. They must address the indisputable fact that having a gas stove is a significant advantage in an emergency when the power is out. It’s one of the only choices a typical homeowner—someone who can’t afford to go off the grid with solar power (I wish) or have a whole-house generator—can make that will soften the blow of a power outage. While you shouldn’t try to heat your house with your gas stove when the power is out (that’s dangerous), just being able to cook—or boil water when water treatment plants fail (as they have in parts of Texas)—is a real blessing.
Conclusion
Of all the problems plaguing our nation right now, banning gas stoves is a top priority? Hardly. In fact, the opposite is true.
Will banning them, in conjunction with abandoning fossil fuels, wholly curb emissions? Not even close. Even Biden’s climate czar, John Kerry, argued going carbon free won’t have any measurable impact, saying “We could go to zero tomorrow and the problem isn’t solved.”
Don’t believe the hype: Gas stoves are worth defending and using.