A gas burner on a stove
(Image: Sipa USA/Richard B Levine)

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.