Electrify everything. That’s the call to arms from engineer Saul Griffith, subject of tonight’s Australian Story on the ABC and author of the next Quarterly Essay.
Griffith has built an international movement around a simple message: the best way to achieve our climate targets is to replace combustion-powered technologies with electric alternatives. We must simultaneously make our electricity supply clean and abundant, so we can hook all our new stuff up to it. And we’ll save a lot on bills in the process — $500 to $1900 each year, according to the Climate Council.
Research increasingly backs Griffith’s vision. Professor Andrew Blakers at the Australian National University Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems found Australia can get to 80% emissions reductions by 2035 (much more ambitious than our current target of 43% by 2030) by greening our electricity and electrifying transport and appliances, particularly heating.
The biggest barrier to change is the upfront cost to households. But governments can help with that. Griffith advised the Biden administration on its recent climate and tax bill, which will provide billions in rebates and tax credits to low- and middle-income households for upgrading and retrofitting cars and appliances.
Now he is weighing into Australia’s “climate wars”. He inspired the federal electrification package, which the Greens made a condition of their support for Labor’s climate legislation in December. The details are being designed by Treasury for the May budget, but we know it will involve incentives for households to switch to electric products.
As Labor and the Greens lock horns again on climate policy, this time over the “safeguard mechanism”, Griffith has again offered an electric solution. He recently suggested Prime Minister Anthony Albanese allay Greens Leader Adam Bandt’s concerns about over-polluting companies buying “dubious offsets” by making such companies underwrite the cost of household electrification.
Australia finally appears poised to throw some of our gas-powered products on the scrap heap. Which should be the first to go? I suggest our gas stoves, for they’re not only bad for the planet’s health — they’re bad for our health too.
Cooking the planet
Cooking with gas is cooking the planet. Indeed, even when your stove is off it is probably leaking methane. A recent study found stovetop leaks in US homes produce about 500,000 petrol cars’ worth of emissions over a 20-year period. The study’s authors are looking at Australia next.
Evidence increasingly shows that such gas leakage is also harmful to our health, particularly for children. Gas burners produce invisible byproducts, including nitrogen dioxide, benzene (a known carcinogen) and PM2.5, which have various health impacts including respiratory illness.
A recent study found one in eight cases of childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stoves. Long-term exposure has also been linked to chronic lung disease and increased mortality overall. Observers are now asking whether gas stoves could be the “new cigarettes”.
This mounting evidence led US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) official Richard Trumka Jr to mull the possibility of regulating or even banning gas stoves. He later clarified that any new rules would apply only to new products. The CPSC will solicit public comment in March. A full federal ban appears unlikely, and President Joe Biden doesn’t support one, though many US cities and states have tightened regulations or banned new gas hook-ups.
This hasn’t stopped Republicans from stoking a cynical culture war about Biden’s supposed plan to seize Americans’ beloved cooktops, nor industry lobbyists from desperately muddying the waters using methods straight from the Big Tobacco playbook.
As The New York Times reported, the American Gas Association has recently worked with toxicologist Julie Goodman to “help it counter health concerns linked to gas”. Goodman previously worked with tobacco giant Philip Morris to portray Marlboro Lights as a safer option for smokers during a 2015 class-action lawsuit, alongside other work for various industry groups on consumer health claims.
This is just one in a series of interventions by the gas stove industry to counter negative press, after decades of slick PR got us all to associate “cooking with gas” with progress.
Renters should be fuming
In crafting our electrification package, we should also seek to address the differential decision-making power of owners and renters.
Biden’s Griffith-inspired bill gives homeowners an $840 rebate if they switch from gas to electric stoves. But as The New Republic’s Liza Featherstone wrote: “Renters, however, don’t yet have a right to choose not to be poisoned by this dangerous product.”
American renters are more likely to be younger and from racial minority groups, who are on average more vulnerable to the respiratory issues gas stoves can cause. And they’re more likely to be in older homes, not benefiting from city-level bans on new gas hook-ups.
Featherstone suggested requiring landlords to mitigate gas harms for their tenants, with regulations like those for lead paint. Subsidies could be given to landlords to assist them with transition costs. And for social and public housing, governments should hastily get to work replacing gas fit-outs.
It’s time to extinguish our gas burners. It will be a small step towards an electrified future, in which progress will be signified by “cooking with electricity”.
Will you get rid of your gas stove? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
After years of cooking on gas, I installed an induction cooktop. The first thing you notice after how fast induction is, is the absence of unused heat – the hot air rising around the base of your saucepans. Simply doesn’t exist with induction. Then there’s the ease of cleaning – no burnt on spills like ceramic or gas, the cooktop surface only gets hot under the pan, just wipe the glass clean. Brilliant, never go back!
They are fantastic I never tire of the ease of cleaning. Other advantages: timers, boil dry detection and temperature settings.
I did however get a gas bottle wok burner for the verandah, the one limitation I found, but you only need to run it for minutes.
The article is no doubt all true but wok cooking may never be the same…
most Asian chefs prefer induction heated wok cooking to gas. Even an old amateur like me loved our Swiss made induction wok by VZug in our 5 year old home. Now we’ve ‘downsized to a home with a gas cooktop and I’m grieving our loss!
My stainless steel wok has a semi flat base so it would work on induction. If stainless can be used.
Dedicated Chinese style high pressure woks burners are very efficient since they cook very fast. A gas bottle lasts me well over a year.
The only potential downside to induction cookers is for people with pacemakers. Caution is necessary.
https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/medical/ask-the-experts/induction-hobs-and-pacemakers
That is a problem as well for those with defibrilators . Another issue is to find out if there are long term health issues with very powerful magnetic fields that induction cooktops create.
Yes. Difficult to cook when you have to stand at least 2 feet away.
Fossil gas has had its day. The economics are no longer there, let along the health and environment impacts. Next step is a structured plan for the retreat of our gas networks. The renters and remainers simply wont be able to pay for the fixed network costs as people progressively get off.
And yet here we have the gummint approving massive new fracking fields that by themselves will kill any hope of even reaching the pathetic 43% reduction target. The LibNats weren’t serious about climate mitigation and Labor certainly isn’t either.
I got rid of my gas connections, for cooktop, space heating and instant hot water (that last one was the biggest concern) and had the meter removed. And I installed solar panels at the same time.
It was all done in early 2017 when I arrived back from a decade of living outside Australia. I was looking to replace a very effective space heater which tenants had not paid attention to maintaining. A chance remark to the friend I was staying with resulted in her pointing me to an article that said that Australian gas was half the price in Tokyo as it was in Canberra (where I live and where it is cold in winter, especially for someone who had just spent ten years in tropical Asia). And she added that her gas bill for three identical appliances had doubled each year for the previous four years.
I went to talk with a friend, a self-described renewables nerd, and, after two hours of conversation, started the process which was completed within four months.
Best ever decision.
In rental property – old gas stove was to be removed and electric installed. However landlord after checking width of electric said he would have to spend a couple thousand dollars extra apart from stove, to refit the cupboards/bench.on one side. The kitchen is one of those tight pack kits, whole section would need replacement. So got new gas stove. Same for solar panels – too expensive to have individual meters for accounts. He cannot afford the costs with this rental property.
Similar experience for me. I own, with a small mortgage, and am also an “aged female” who has limited income, loan repayments that have gone up $200/month and limited savings unless I raid my super. I also ran into the need for cabinetry (my oven is a wall oven and the whole section would have to be replaced because gas and electric ovens are different sizes. I was also told I’d have to pay at least $1000 for a new electricity circuit. And on top of all that I couldn’t find anyone who was prepared to quote for such a “small” job. Am now looking for a second-hand gas oven from somebody who CAN afford to switch.
Is’nt it possible that an air fryer can do most things an oven can? I had one of those portable convection oven things and I found it worked better than an oven.
I had the same problem with my rental property. I had to replace the stove, but an electric one wasn’t available that would fit, so it had to be replaced with a gas one.
Its all very well individuals taking actions such as switching to electicity from gas, doing less flying, eating less meat etc etc. Cumulatively these achieve some effect but the big easy gains are through stopping lare company emmissions. We have been fooled into thinking that the key responsibility for climate change is an individuals rather than the large corporate emitters.
Yes it’s the crowning glory of neoliberalism, the belief that individual action equals social change, isn’t it?
Meanwhile, in the real world, renters – a third of the population in this economy of houses and holes- are stuck with whatever the landlord gave them and increasingly that’s gas cookers and hot water, dark roofs, dark driveways, blocks so tiny you can touch the neighbours walls and no trees in a new or newish housing sub division with no services or amenities for miles, and neighbours with huge mortgages and no money leftover to take individual action and switch to gas and solar- not for years- but never mind, because around a third of the population or so are in the happy position of being able to take individual action, so everything’s good, isn’t it?
The only thing that will halt climate change is force and that means legislation across all levels of government.