After looking into the data my conclusion is the threat is overblown (big surprise), a large part of it is from cooking of any kind (heating produces particulates) and that if you take some basic precautions (open a window, use vent fan) the risk is very low.
Maybe you're thinking of baba ganoush, which is a dip with a charred eggplant and tahini base. I've made it with eggplant broiled in the oven, and it's fine, but I'm sure the taste is different if they're charred over a flame. (Even though you discard the charred shell either way.) That said you could easily accomplish that with a kitchen torch, the kind also used to finish creme brulee or (if you have a big torch) sous vide meats.
There's also a Balkan variation of baba ganoush without tahini, just cooked eggplant, onion and sunflower or olive oil. It's boringly called 'eggplant salad' in my country. The Greek version is very similar and BBQing the eggplant makes even tastier. Another variation of this dish also exists in the Carribean, where it's called baigan choka.
Opening a window significantly is also pretty unfeasible most of the year.
Edit: I got downvoted for this? I feel like I've seen a lifetime of these fans being decades old and in poor shape. I think you folks are vastly overestimating how many people clean those or replace the filter.
New construction in NYC bans gas stoves.
We use them all the time and if they're not vented properly, we don't get occupancy. The HVAC designer or Engineer on the job wouldn't have it any other way.
That said, mobile homes pretty much always vent outside in my experience.
Too coincidental. Certainly inspired by it.
If you really believe that gas is awful for environment, that more solar and thus electricity should be used, you'd find the reasons to justify it even as brownouts threaten the AC for a good part of Summer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsi%E2%80%93Rosenthal_Box
We used one them during the horrific fires with excellent effect.
And I think your point about particulates from actual cooking is probably true too. I think any high heat cooking or deep frying should be done outside if you don't have a powerful vent.
After all the monitoring for years I can attest that the gas cooktop has a massive influence on poor air quality. The vent hood helps, but does not eliminate CO2. Keeping CO2 under ~700ppm in occupied bedrooms takes some work.
For my next house that I'm building now I've put in induction, will never do gas again. Also supersized the vent hood and HVAC systems.
Indoor air quality is such an unappreciated topic in home construction.
The summary is that a cheap electric kettle can boil water way faster and with far less wasted energy than a stove top kettle.
It’s unfortunate that in the US our electric kettles are much slower than in the U.K.
- work when power is unavailable (outages, camping, etc.)
- are more or less indestructible
- don't take up counter space
I have one of those big 4L Zojirushi electric kettles that I keep plugged in for 8-10 hours a day. Sometimes I will use the stove top kettle for supplementary boiling water when people in my household are using the electric, or I don't want to start a reboil cycle or take too much at once.
The big question in my mind is whether the electric kettle itself is the "final form", or if I'll be proselytizing the same people in ten years to get an Asian style hot water heater/reservoir instead.
Small nit-pick: Electricity generation itself is often very lossy. In the case of fossil sources, the energy waste is just further up the chain (with solar power too, but it matters much less).
A good combined cycle has power plant is about 60%, transmission is about 90%, and an induction stove is about 85%. That gives a net efficiency of 46%.
Just because both are "lossy" that does not mean at all the losses are of comparable magnitude.
So, actual question: "You need X amount of gas in a power plant to generate enough energy for 1000 households to heat their water with induction" vs "You need Y amount for the same number of households using gas stoves". What is the ratio between X and Y? You claim it is about 1. Is it? Or much larger than 1 or much smaller than 1?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/climate/nyt-climate-newsl...
"an overall efficiency [of a gas stove was] only 30.5 percent"
"The microwave was a bit better; it clocked in at about 43 percent efficiency."
"[Electric kettles] hit 70 percent efficiency."
And it can cost a pretty penny to get a building up to this standard.
[1] Though it must also be pointed out that older housing stock tends very strongly to be electric anyway. Gas cooktops have always been high end devices. People renting buildings in old urban neighborhoods never installed them.
The infrastructure for running natural gas lines costs money, so it is most economical in these more densely populated areas. Within 30 miles of where I live natural gas is dominant, but further out from this suburb of a major city electric heat and electric stoves are significant more common.
We could still cook food on our gas stove.
We still had hot water from our gas hot water heater (though the pipes eventually froze).
I've only been to Austin + gotten gas around Amarillo on my way to ABQ, but as someone who's spent most my life in blue dots in red states, it's hard to put into words how angry that entire fiasco made me.
(And I'm someone who nearly did an MFA in Creative Nonfiction... I am very good at describing how I feel, it's a very purposeful exploitation of American libel law -- propaganda is the selective telling of truths, especially paired with our libel laws[1])
Anyways to swing it back to the article/thread:
Were you not able to run a thin stream of water?
I was lucky to have water included in every place I rented up til now, I used to joke if a landlord angers me I can set up a flywheel, but it also meant if it gets cold I'm not worried about cost if I switch it to the warm side and run a thin stream while I sleep or go out for espresso.
Orders of magnitude, I used to have an all electric apartment, using a fan versus AC was a 25 dollar difference or more. I used to do the math, and nursing an iced tea down the road during the hottest four hours of the day, some days, could pay for itself, but that was before the rents skyrocketed as scores of cost indifferent international students moved in just as I was moving out.
(Last I was in the town I'm referencing, it had gone from 500ish walkable to campus to more like 1K and littered with those damn scooters.)
There has been no better time for electric-only cooking. Air fryers are FAR more energy efficient than ovens, and also cook faster. Sous-vide cookers are cheap and can cook certain dishes to perfection every time. Instant pot style pressure cookers cover most of the rest. And everyone already knows the convenience of microwave ovens.
Unless you're cooking a big roast or bird or cake, most stovetop and oven cooking can be done better with modern tools.
It doesn't matter what the facts are, its just a personal preference thing at that point.
People love to show off their kitchens for some weird reason (regardless of how much of it they actually need or use), so of course it turns into an audiophile-style argument (cast iron seasoning comes to mind, or those ostentatious "wall of oven-like devices" that some MPs are getting called elitist over). Conspicuous consumption makes people do funny things.
Once the gas is finally gone, you'll see people claiming they knew that electric was better all along. And I suppose I'll be saying that "I liked electric before it was cool, man!"
Seriously, find me a chef who prefers electric and I'll eat my shoe.
But I am not going to live with losing power a dozen times a year for up to a day at a time because a corporation wants my life to be the tip of the misery spear instead of their profit margins taking a hit.
And if you think general populace in the first world countries will suffer through consistent blackout, I think you are utterly and completely mistaken.
