[dlisboa]

This relates to a difficult topic, which is: should modern civilization be 100% carbon neutral?

Some things are inherently difficult to make electric, yet we need them to have what we'd call a "modern civilization". Planes are the biggest one: there is a drive to use more trains instead of planes, but should we give that up? It is definitely a step backwards in civilization, as large parts of the world are now impossible to go to and from. Some people admonish flight tourism as hedonistic and say it harms the planet: but should people not be allowed to travel intercontinentally? Is that the world we want?

I believe the investment in carbon capture and greenhouse gases abatement should be increased. Not just because we'll not meet our climate goals and need a way to clean our atmosphere, but because even if we do we still need some things that burn fossil fuels (possibly for hundreds of years).

In that sense, if all of our energy grid was renewable, heavy industries didn't burn coal, and all cars were also electric, would it matter that we have gas stoves and other modern conveniences? Maybe not.

[occz]

I don't think that this is relevant at all in the context of this discussion - electric cooking methods - particularly induction - are superior to gas in essentially every way, shape or form - barring the production of wok hei, which is why the article stresses that so much, while conveniently leaving out all the massive downsides of gas stoves.

Gas stoves are also generally used by gas companies to get gas lines drawn into buildings, so that they can easily sell gas to the bigger consumer of gas - heating. And indeed, in this aspect too, gas is _vastly_ inferior to modern heating technologies such as heat pumps.

There is no real convenience trade-off when it comes to gas. It's time for it to die, permanently.

[tompccs]

Everything you have written is wrong.

Gas is very efficient. If you have the choice of burning gas at a power station (which is how a lot of electricity is generated now a days) and piping it directly into people's homes for the end goal of generating heat, piping wins every time. The inefficiencies of converting gas to electricity and transporting that electricity are significant and well known.

Additionally, I don't know how anyone who has cooked on gas and electric can claim electric is superior. I will grant that a very good electric (ie, induction) _might_ be superior to a very bad gas, but I have used a lot of examples of each and I would choose gas every time (and to demonstrate I am not ideological about this, I always prefer electric ovens over gas).

Heat pumps are also a vastly overrated technology which only work for very well insulated houses with an HVAC system which keeps the rooms ventilated artificially.

I am big on electrification - I'm a Tesla shareholder - but the carbon benefits of electric heating over gas are minute. The Green agenda should avoid battles where the perceived detriment to people's quality of life vastly exceeds the provable environmental benefit.

[derriz]

Burning gas on a stove to heat food is about 40% efficient. Induction is about 85% efficient. Modern CCGT is about 60% efficient. So converting the energy contained in natural gas into electricity in a large CCGT plant and then cooking with the electricity is more efficient than piping the gas to a home and burning it there.

More importantly for me is that, you don't pollute your breathing air with the byproducts of combusting gas indoors in your home - particular nitrous oxides and fine particulates.

[pirate787]

My friend is just 36 and a chef. She has stage 4 lung cancer. I wonder how much her workplace particulate matter exposure played a role.

[jdmichal]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_source_heat_pump#In_cold_c...

A study by Natural Resources Canada found that cold climate air source heat pumps (CC-ASHPs) work in Canadian winters, based on testing in Ottawa (Ontario) in late December 2012 to early January 2013 using a ducted CC-ASHP. (The report does not explicitly state whether backup heat sources should be considered for temperatures below −30 °C. The record low for Ottawa is −36 °C.) The CC-ASHP provided 60% energy savings compared to natural gas (in energy units).[10] When considering energy efficiency in electricity generation however, more energy would be used with the CC-ASHP, relative to natural gas heating, in provinces or territories (Alberta, Nova Scotia, and the Northwest Territories) where coal-fired generation was the predominant method of electricity generation. (The energy savings in Saskatchewan were marginal. Other provinces use primarily hydroelectric and/or nuclear generation.) Despite the significant energy savings relative to gas in provinces not relying primarily on coal, the higher cost of electricity relative to natural gas (using 2012 retail prices in Ottawa, Ontario) made natural gas the less expensive energy source.

[crooked-v]

> Gas is very efficient.

The way my entire kitchen noticeably heats up from pan-searing anything says otherwise.

[SECProto]

> Additionally, I don't know how anyone who has cooked on gas and electric can claim electric is superior

In addition to all the other responses you've received disputing technical aspects of your post, I'd just like to comment on this one. I've used both extensively (coil, solid resistive, halogen, and infrared for electric, and both bottled and piped for gas), and I far prefer an induction or even a coil stove over gas for everything except for wok. For example, I currently live in a place with a gas stove, and if I want to boil water quickly, I will put 1.7 litres in an electric kettle and 0.3 in a large pot on an appropriately sized burner. By the time the 1500W kettle boils, the water in the pot on the gas stove is ~80°C.

[kalleboo]

> Heat pumps are also a vastly overrated technology which only work for very well insulated houses with an HVAC system which keeps the rooms ventilated artificially

I live in a Japanese apartment (=absolutely terribly insulated, single pane glass, drafty as hell) and our minisplits work way better than any resistive heating we've tried. The only other heaters we use are radiant heaters to heat your body quickly if you don't need to heat the rest of the room.

I don't see how "method that heats air using less energy" can be worse than "method that heard air using more energy". Both are just heating air.

[WastingMyTime89]

> If you have the choice of burning gas at a power station (which is how a lot of electricity is generated now a days) and piping it directly into people's homes for the end goal of generating heat, piping wins every time.

That’s factually wrong.

> I will grant that a very good electric (ie, induction)

This sentence doesn’t make sense. Resistive and induction cooktops have nothing in common. One is not a good version of the other. It’s a completely different experience. The fact that you don’t seem aware of this seriously hinders your comment.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Heat pumps are also a vastly overrated technology which only work for very well insulated houses with an HVAC system which keeps the rooms ventilated artificially.

Well that's weird. I live in 1875 adobe house with no HVAC system other than my wall-mounted minisplits. The house is poorly insulated (adobe has high thermal mass but is a very poor insulator, plus lots of leaky windows and roof construction details). The heat pumps kept us warm during this last winter's 5F overnights.

[occz]

>Everything you have written is wrong.

I think most of your counterpoints have been entirely disproven by other posters, but I'll chip in a few more points

>Gas is very efficient. If you have the choice of burning gas at a power station (which is how a lot of electricity is generated now a days) and piping it directly into people's homes for the end goal of generating heat, piping wins every time. The inefficiencies of converting gas to electricity and transporting that electricity are significant and well nown.

This is only true for an energy mix using 100% gas, which is dumb, outdated and rapidly vanishing. Given the very small efficiency difference in gas -> stove to gas -> electricity -> induction, as soon as you have merely a few percentages of renewables, gas becomes the clear loser. The more of the grid we move to renewables, the more gas loses out, and the trend towards renewables is undeniable merely on the economics of it.

That's only covering the cooking-case. Heat pumps are several times more efficient than gas heating down to very low temperatures, I'm really not sure how you can be so wrong on the facts for that point.

>Additionally, I don't know how anyone who has cooked on gas and electric can claim electric is superior. I will grant that a very good electric (ie, induction) _might be superior to a very bad gas, but have used a lot of examples of each and would choose gas every time (and to demonstrate am not ideological about this, always prefer electric ovens over gas).

Whatever small preference people at large have for gas cooking is dwarfed entirely by the list pf drawbacks it has, and that's not even involving the environmental aspects - completely wrecking your indoor air quality is enough of a reason to disregard gas cooking as a technology entirely. Having to risk gas leaks is another aspect that is bafflingly dumb.

>Heat pumps are also a vastly overrated technology which only work for very well insulated houses with an HVAC system which keeps the rooms ventilated artificially.

You very clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

>l am big on electrification - I'm a Tesla shareholder. but the carbon benefits of electric heating over gas are minute. The Green agenda should avoid battles where the perceived detriment to people's quality of life vastly exceeds the provable environmental benefit.

'The Green agenda' - jesus christ.

Any imagined quality-of-life difference between gas cooking and induction is trivial nonsense.

Also, Tesla is not a climate solution, fwiw.

[marvin]

Civilization can and must be climate gas neutral. Can be accomplished through massive build-out of geological-time CO2 sequestering, financed with global taxes on greenhouse gas emissions and international agreements to the same effect.

End-state will still have lots of economic processes that require releasing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, even new or novel ones. But these will be offset by the sequestering paid by their taxation.

Taxes will shift greenhouse gas emissions to no-emission alternatives where that's practical and desirable, probably meaning most of them in the end.

[imtringued]

I am convinced that fundamental changes are required in the economy for us to solve climate change. I recently watched a video about carbon offsets by growing trees and it is basically fraud.

You know, using terra preta for soil improvement would generate basically infinite demand bio char which can then be sequestered into the soil.

If you wanted to get carbon out of the atmosphere this would not only sequester carbon, it would also improve the soil and reduce the need for synthetics in conventional farming.

There is no way this will happen. If we had the right economic system we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.

[viraptor]

> there is a drive to use more trains instead of planes, but should we give that up?

If you have good trains it's not giving things up. Apart from long distance travel HS trains are just better is almost every way.