Time to Dump the Gas Stove
If not because it destroys the climate and fouls the air, then because cooking on it sucks.
I spent the first two weeks of September in Durango, Colorado, a beautiful little town at nearly 7000 feet in the southwest corner of the state. The hiking was great, the river that runs through the town is beautiful, and my wife pronounced the town itself to be “adorable”.
This is the second year in a row we have rented a place there to enjoy the mountain amenities, and have had a delightful time. And the second year in a row I have been reminded how much I now dislike cooking on a natural gas stove.
The morning view from our rental in Durango
At home in the Bay Area, we put in an electric induction stove three years ago. As the main cook in the family, I have been singing its praises ever since. Yet, we have friends who not only aren’t ready to dump their high-end gas stoves, but can’t even imagine switching when they need a new one.
I don’t own stock in any stove companies or any electric utilities. But I do cook quite a bit, and I am always checking out new recipes, utensils, and appliances. There are many reviews of induction stoves out there, but they seem to be written from the product descriptions, rather than from the actual experience of cooking on them. So, since I get asked about induction stoves a lot, here’s my view, and my explanation of why I was so annoyed to be stuck with gas in our Durango rentals.
Power. The first argument you hear from gas devotees is that electric stoves just don’t have the oomph they need. They’ve never experienced electric induction cooking. Our mid-range model heats water – and anything else – faster than any gas stove I have ever used. The only-partial joke in our household is that you never turn your back on the stove, because it heats so powerfully that it is easy to burn things or have them boil over, at least until you learn the settings.
In part, that power is because nearly all of the energy used by the stove is going into the pan and its content. That’s in contrast to a gas stove, which is heating not just the air under the pan, but a lot of the air around the pan, particularly if you are turning it up high.
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That has another big advantage for klutzy cooks, like me. I burn myself a lot less often on an electric induction stove. The only thing that is hot is the pan and its content. Not the handle, not the cooking surface around it, not the air next to the pan where a gas flame would be licking. I spend less time with my hand in ice water these days.
Responsiveness. The old electric stoves had a well-deserved bad reputation for heating up slowly and adjusting slowly. If something was cooking too fast, the only choice you had was to move the pan off the burner, and then wait a couple of minutes for it to readjust. Not so with induction. It adjusts instantly. You turn off the burner and it stops cooking.
Precision. I have spent years cooking with gas, and just as long bent over trying to adjust the flame just right. Our induction stove has 20 little dots on the control. I don’t have to guess at how high the flame is, or spend time trying to nudge it just a little bit up or down. My recipes now remind me to cook a dish at “5 dots”, so I do.
(Source) The never-ending adjustments to get the flame just right
Size of the heating area. Here’s something that my friends who use electric induction didn’t flag when I was checking them out. On a gas stove, when you reduce the flame to a very low level, the flame gets smaller and the diameter of the cooking area shrinks. Not so on an induction stove. You can put a big pan on an induction surface, set it to the very lowest setting, and it still heats every bit of that pan to the same level. No hot spots in the middle and cold edges.
Pots and Pans. If you have thought about an electric induction stove, you have surely heard that some pots and pans won’t work on them. It’s true. But most will, and your most prized pans are likely to. Cast iron works just great, as does anything with steel in it. And virtually all new pots and pans are induction-friendly. The manufacturers have figured out that all they need to do is put in a layer of steel and it works fine with induction, regardless of what the actual cooking surface is.
Which reminds me that even some of our induction-unfriendly pots still work with the induction stove. I have a big soup pot that must be aluminum or some other material that is not magnetic. But just like the manufacturers who put in a layer of steel, you can buy a steel disc that goes on the burner and beneath your non-induction pot. The disc gets hot and heats the pot. I wouldn’t use it for frying, but for slow simmering in a big pot, it works great, and still seems to dissipate less heat than a gas flame.
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Cleaning. The division of labor in our house means that I usually don’t have to do the cleanup, but my wife quickly pointed out one of the biggest advantages of electric induction. The top is one continuous, smooth impact-resistant glass surface, about the easiest thing you could imagine for cleaning, especially compared to the burners of a gas stove with all the strangely shaped parts that can take a long time after a messy spill. I do help out by cleaning spills as I go, because the surface heat dissipates almost immediately when you turn off the burner, so you can wipe up spills before they have a chance to harden.
Pollution. I couldn’t finish the list of advantages without noting that electric induction is just a much more environmentally-friendly way to cook, for both indoor air quality and the planet.
Induction Downsides. The biggest drawback is the upfront cost. Electric induction stoves are coming down in price, but can still cost 50% more than gas equivalents. And the induction option could require an electric service upgrade, depending on the capacity of your panel, and the other appliances you own. New technologies, however, may reduce that need.
Beyond cost, there are a couple of other issues that I would consider minor annoyances. If you want to roast something over an open flame, such as a pepper, you are out of luck with electric induction. Of course, I haven’t given up my barbecue, so I have an alternative. And electric induction isn’t much use if you don’t have electricity. During power outages, the stove is useless, either to cook food or to heat your house (not the safest thing to do, but I know I’m not the only one who has done it). And most backup power sources aren’t going to support the power draw of an electric induction, so you are going to want a different cooking source during power outages. I can do most things on our propane barbecue, and if you have one that has a side burner, that should handle it if outages are rare.
Bottom Line. Not everyone can afford to upgrade to an electric induction stove. But in my experience, it is a clear step up from any other stovetop cooking technology. If I had to go back to gas, I would fight like…well, like those people who are fighting to stick with their gas stoves. For now, I will keep looking for a dog-friendly rental in Durango with an induction stove.
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Suggested citation: Borenstein, Severin. “Time to Dump the Gas Stove” Energy Institute Blog, UC Berkeley, September 25, 2023, https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2023/09/25/time-to-dump-the-gas-stove/
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Severin Borenstein View All
Severin Borenstein is Professor of the Graduate School in the Economic Analysis and Policy Group at the Haas School of Business and Faculty Director of the Energy Institute at Haas. He received his A.B. from U.C. Berkeley and Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T. His research focuses on the economics of renewable energy, economic policies for reducing greenhouse gases, and alternative models of retail electricity pricing. Borenstein is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA. He served on the Board of Governors of the California Power Exchange from 1997 to 2003. During 1999-2000, he was a member of the California Attorney General's Gasoline Price Task Force. In 2012-13, he served on the Emissions Market Assessment Committee, which advised the California Air Resources Board on the operation of California’s Cap and Trade market for greenhouse gases. In 2014, he was appointed to the California Energy Commission’s Petroleum Market Advisory Committee, which he chaired from 2015 until the Committee was dissolved in 2017. From 2015-2020, he served on the Advisory Council of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Since 2019, he has been a member of the Governing Board of the California Independent System Operator.
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We put in a new house with all electric utilities. No gas hookup at all. The induction cooktop is great. It can boil water for coffee or pasta really fast. We put in a multi-drop heat pump HVAC system. It works great. The nice thing is we only need to heat or cool the room we are using. We got a large rebate from the local electric utility.
We are installing an induction stove this week! I was surprised to learn how many of our current pots will work just fine on the new stove (and thanks for the steel plate tip!) But I have the same question as the above commenter, and I should have asked this earlier in the process- where DOES my old gas stove top go? I need to be more responsible for the waste this project will generate if not addressed properly.
Your old gas stove top goes the same place when you would have replaced it with a new gas stove. Newer gas stoves are not built to last as long at the ones from 70 years ago. We have one installed in 2004 by the previous owner and we can already see the end of its life coming.
You need to get pro chefs on board, and as evangelists. I have many friends who continue to insist “real chefs” cook with gas.
Interesting, Severin. If you haven’t already, you should consider a second career in kitchen appliance sales, you’re very convincing.
My only experience with an induction stove was when my Mom bought a 1st-gen induction stove in the 1980s. You couldn’t tell whether the damn thing was on or off, and my sisters and I were getting burned all the time – but that was when they were rare. It seemed to take forever to bring something to a boil.
From an environmental standpoint, ours was cleaner than even your new one is. That’s because the more than half of Chicagoland’s electricity was powered by nuclear energy, 40 years ago. Makes a big difference – especially come dinner time.
Though Severin focused on the “oomph” of the induction stove and its considerable culinary attributes, it’s worth noting in more general EI@H blog-speak that U.S. EPA has determined the following: “The per unit efficiency of induction Cooking Tops is about 5-10% more efficient than conventional electric resistance units and about 3 times more efficient than gas. If all Cooking Tops sold in 2021 in the U.S. used induction technology and met these draft criteria, the energy cost savings would exceed $125 million and the energy savings would exceed 1,000 GWh.”
Getting back to the culinary kerfuffle over gas v. induction, when the City of Palo Alto skirted a new natural gas appliance ban and “grandfathered” the use of gas cooking in Jose Andres’ new eatery, Zaytinya, in the Stanford Mall, Andres’ legal team claimed that “Without a gas connection and appliances, Zaytinya would be forced to alter its signature five-star menu, which it is unwilling to do” because the restaurant would not be able to “achieve its signature, complex flavors.”
I look forward to Professor Borenstein’s rebuttal of this assertion, with ample inductive reasoning (and seasoning), in the premier episode of Severin’s Sauté Symposium. (Check your local PBS listings.)
Electricity in PGE territory is more than 10x the price of gas at dinner time (62 vs 5.8 ¢/kwh, so even if you leave 3x efficiency, you are ahead with gas. I look forward to your rebuttal
In terms of avoiding CO2 emissions, switching to electric cooking is less favorable than electrifying other end uses, at least in states like CA where solar provides a large share of renewable electricity. Cooking dinner — the main cooking in most homes — coincides with peak demand in the 5 to 9 period; not the best time to be adding electricity demand. Providing that power is either dirty (gas turbines) or expensive (battery storage).
What about the oven? Are there induction ovens? How well do they work?
I think people should have a choice about what stove they use, but the should also have the right information about that choice, which is often not provided by the more energetic gas-stove dumpers.
As a carbon emitter, gas stoves are really not a major contributor. Marginal electric generation is typically provided by natural gas. When considering fuel switching, the generation and transmission losses are quite signficant when looking at source efficiency.
In terms of Indoor Air Quality, the difference between gas and electric is again minor, if we has properly ventilated the home. Most of the contaminants come from cooking and should be exhausted. If that is done the marginal impact of the products of combustion are relatively small
One thing that may not be important everywhere, but is in California, is load on the grid–particularly the peak load, given that most cooking happens during utility peaks. Until there is plenty of carbon free electricity available, fuel switching cooking is a loser from a societal point of view.
The primary reason to dump gas stoves is not due to the relatively minor use for cooking but rather it’s the last tenuous hook that the gas company has to maintain service for the much larger uses of space and water heating. The stove is one direct interface a consumer has that can weigh in for continued gas service. Once that is eliminated then getting rid of the other much bigger emitters is much easier.
The true marginal resource is the new renewable generator and associated battery storage added to serve the incremental load, not just a simply ramping up and down of existing gas plants. As you point out, much cooking happens during peak periods when existing gas plants are already running at full capacity so they can be ramped up any further. This is a conceptual error made much too often in studies on how the electric system will change in response to electrification.
The problem with indoor air quality is that too many kitchens don’t have that ventilation and even then, too few people even know the reason to use that ventilation. We only learned about this in the last couple years and I would consider us among the better informed. Eliminating the emission source is the better solution.
As for mandates, we are no longer in a place where we can leave everything to consumer choice. This is particularly true given the misinformation many corporate and vendor interests spread about the choices.
The gas stove is last tenuous hook by the gas company into serving the house. The gas company is much more interested in the furnace and water heater, and switching the one direct consumer interface to electricity makes switching the other two much more feasible and cost effective.
The marginal resource is a renewable plus storage that serves the incremental load. As you point out, cooking happens during peak periods when gas plants are already at full output and cannot be ramped up any further. It will require a new resource and gas plants are not the envisioned generation. The focus on immediate ramping is misplaced as an indicator of marginal costs. The true marginal cost in an electric system is incurred at the moment of resource interconnection, not subsequent operation.
We’re beyond the point of leaving all decisions about environmental consequences to consumers. We required purchase of cars with seat belts and catalytic converters with huge societal benefits. The self interests of utility corporations and HVAC vendors distort the information that consumers receive so their decisions are not properly informed.
In a kitchen redo, we found that we could replace the gas oven but not the gas cooktop with relatively little electrical upgrade. The innovations to reduce the grid power requirements might have changed that!
Recipes?