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How does removing natural gas stoves reduce carbon emissions? Unless the cities are using a lot of renewables I'd expect going from natural-gas to heat would be

How does removing natural gas stoves reduce carbon emissions? Unless the cities are using a lot of renewables I'd expect going from natural-gas to heat would be a lot more efficient than going from some-fuel to electricity to heat?

wffurr 5y ago
Induction stoves are very efficient and it’s possible to run them with solar or wind power. Reducing natural gas infrastructure will also reduce methane leaks, which is also a potent greenhouse gas.
GravitasFailure 5y ago
I've heard electric burners are more energy efficient than gas because you have a more direct energy transfer through physical contact, and induction are even more efficient because the cookware is the heating element. Of course to reduce greenhouse emissions that increase in efficiency needs to be greater than the generation and transmission transmission losses. I'd be fascinated to see emissions figures related to restaurants and home cooking from gas. It'd be shocking if it were more than a rounding error.
- cartoonworld 5y ago
  Electric does not have a more direct energy transfer through physical contact. Consider your GPU or CPU: with the cooling fan disconnected, imagine or even very carefully experiment with the tempuratures that the heat sink will reach. Now uninstall the heat sink, clean the thermal paste off of both surfaces, and repeat the experiment. Induction is more efficient in the way you describe. Cooking has gotta be less than %0.5 of total domestic ghg. We would do so much better and avoid needless political hassles by increasing solar wind geothermal and hydroeclectric, electrifying fleets, and controlling centralized industrial and agricultural sources.
  - jhoechtl 5y ago
    We would do so much better if these giant vessels the international supply chain is relying on would run on a greener energy but crude oil.
nate_meurer 5y ago
I think the idea is just to better position household energy usage in order to take advantage of rapidly expanding renewable electrical generation.
0xB31B1B 5y ago
The goal is to decarbonize our economy. We need to convert pretty much everything that uses fossil fuels in house to use electricity. At the same time we are replacing in house fossil fuel usage (gas stoves, gas water heaters, etc) we also need to be increasing the energy share of renewables on the grid. Its not an "either/or" its a "both/and" situation. Decarbonizing the household can and should be done in tandem with decarbonizing the grid. Induction stoves, which are the modern alternative to gas, are much more efficient, get to temperature instantly, and are generally considered a very high quality.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  They are also more fragile and have a high cost of repairs, and aren’t we running out of copper?
  - 0xB31B1B 5y ago
    1) "fragility and cost of repairs" are not an inherent quality of a manufactured product. When gas appliances were new, they were also fragile and expensive to repair. The process by which they became sturdy and cheap to repair was that they became widely used, which lead to an incentive structure where the companies that manufacture them were rewarded for making them sturdier and easier to repair. If we can make induction stoves a widely used appliance, their fragility and cost of repairs will improve due to the natural improvements during a products lifecycle. 2) No, we are not running out of copper.
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      I can have a guy at my house same-day to fix a gas oven, or maybe just grease the valve myself. A computer-controlled induction coil will never be so simple to fix, in some cases it's probably cheaper to junk the broken one and replace the whole thing. And I was obviously being a little facetious, but copper is becoming more expensive and mines are having to expand to meet demand.
  - jhoechtl 5y ago
    My moms gas oven is 50 years old. It did't fail a single time. Doesn't have electric ignition though. Still running on the fist set of flame outlets. It will probably outlive her. My understanding of how they work is that they are dam simple and reliable.
Freak_NL 5y ago
It's not just taking what little gas is used for cooking out of the equation because of the shift to renewable sources of energy. When heating is done with electricity or district heating it makes sense to get rid of the gas infrastructure completely. The maintenance and infrastructure costs for having a gas pipe to every home in every street just for cooking are too high to make economic sense once you take out heating of rooms and water (i.e., the bulk of a house's gas usage).
klodolph 5y ago
The answer is that natural gas hookups to homes leak some amount of natural gas, and the leakage in the distribution system is somewhere around 2-3%, some of that is residential. The GWP of natural gas is fairly high--somewhere around 84.

wffurr 5y ago

Induction stoves are very efficient and it’s possible to run them with solar or wind power. Reducing natural gas infrastructure will also reduce methane leaks, which is also a potent greenhouse gas.

GravitasFailure 5y ago

I've heard electric burners are more energy efficient than gas because you have a more direct energy transfer through physical contact, and induction are even more efficient because the cookware is the heating element. Of course to reduce greenhouse emissions that increase in efficiency needs to be greater than the generation and transmission transmission losses. I'd be fascinated to see emissions figures related to restaurants and home cooking from gas. It'd be shocking if it were more than a rounding error.

cartoonworld 5y ago
Electric does not have a more direct energy transfer through physical contact. Consider your GPU or CPU: with the cooling fan disconnected, imagine or even very carefully experiment with the tempuratures that the heat sink will reach. Now uninstall the heat sink, clean the thermal paste off of both surfaces, and repeat the experiment. Induction is more efficient in the way you describe. Cooking has gotta be less than %0.5 of total domestic ghg. We would do so much better and avoid needless political hassles by increasing solar wind geothermal and hydroeclectric, electrifying fleets, and controlling centralized industrial and agricultural sources.
- jhoechtl 5y ago
  We would do so much better if these giant vessels the international supply chain is relying on would run on a greener energy but crude oil.

nate_meurer 5y ago

I think the idea is just to better position household energy usage in order to take advantage of rapidly expanding renewable electrical generation.

0xB31B1B 5y ago

The goal is to decarbonize our economy. We need to convert pretty much everything that uses fossil fuels in house to use electricity. At the same time we are replacing in house fossil fuel usage (gas stoves, gas water heaters, etc) we also need to be increasing the energy share of renewables on the grid. Its not an "either/or" its a "both/and" situation. Decarbonizing the household can and should be done in tandem with decarbonizing the grid. Induction stoves, which are the modern alternative to gas, are much more efficient, get to temperature instantly, and are generally considered a very high quality.

jazzyjackson 5y ago
They are also more fragile and have a high cost of repairs, and aren’t we running out of copper?
- 0xB31B1B 5y ago
  1) "fragility and cost of repairs" are not an inherent quality of a manufactured product. When gas appliances were new, they were also fragile and expensive to repair. The process by which they became sturdy and cheap to repair was that they became widely used, which lead to an incentive structure where the companies that manufacture them were rewarded for making them sturdier and easier to repair. If we can make induction stoves a widely used appliance, their fragility and cost of repairs will improve due to the natural improvements during a products lifecycle. 2) No, we are not running out of copper.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    I can have a guy at my house same-day to fix a gas oven, or maybe just grease the valve myself. A computer-controlled induction coil will never be so simple to fix, in some cases it's probably cheaper to junk the broken one and replace the whole thing. And I was obviously being a little facetious, but copper is becoming more expensive and mines are having to expand to meet demand.
- jhoechtl 5y ago
  My moms gas oven is 50 years old. It did't fail a single time. Doesn't have electric ignition though. Still running on the fist set of flame outlets. It will probably outlive her. My understanding of how they work is that they are dam simple and reliable.

Freak_NL 5y ago

It's not just taking what little gas is used for cooking out of the equation because of the shift to renewable sources of energy. When heating is done with electricity or district heating it makes sense to get rid of the gas infrastructure completely. The maintenance and infrastructure costs for having a gas pipe to every home in every street just for cooking are too high to make economic sense once you take out heating of rooms and water (i.e., the bulk of a house's gas usage).

klodolph 5y ago

The answer is that natural gas hookups to homes leak some amount of natural gas, and the leakage in the distribution system is somewhere around 2-3%, some of that is residential. The GWP of natural gas is fairly high--somewhere around 84.