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Australia must rapidly transition away from gas to renewable energy for environmental and economic reasons.
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Gas is not a transitional fuel, and its climate impacts may be underestimated due to methane leakage across the supply chain. Phasing out gas is critical to meet climate targets.
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Electrification powered by renewables can meet energy needs more cheaply and cleanly. Heat pumps, induction cooktops and electric vehicles are mature technologies ready to replace gas.
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Gas demand is declining globally while renewables are booming. Investing further in gas risks billions in stranded assets. Renewables create more jobs than fossil fuels.
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Government policy should support electrification, ensure no new gas infrastructure is built, and assist workers transition from gas industries. Phasing out gas by 2030 is feasible with political will. Our future depends on acting swiftly.
The environmental gains are nice and all - but you’ll get further if you just point out the economic advantages.
- Depending how often you cook, you can save about $2,000 per year by cooking with an induction stove*
- If you replace your gas hot water heater with a solar one, you can save about $500 per year
- In a cold climate, you can save another $2,000 per year by heating your home with a reverse cycle air conditioner instead of a gas heater. And it’ll keep you cool in summer.
So - several thousand dollars per year in savings. More than enough to justify the upgrade price.
(* also, a good induction stoves will run hotter than any gas stove, and you can set a lower minimum temperature as well. Best of all though at every temperature in between you’ll have more control and faster temperature changes than a gas stove).
Thank you for this. I intentionally discard articles if they dont have a reasonable environmental focus which makes things seem a little one sided. Someone has to be the Lorax. Good to see you rounding it out and if that’s what people need, then all the better.
Maybe make the “good” induction stove more obvious because the cheaper you go, the less control you have. We have a gas stove and a cheap induction hob that we use most of the time instead. It’s iffy in the control but it’s quicker, more efficient, and when the sun is shining, basically free.
I am guessing those figures are based on East coast’s gas prices?
I have a gas stove unfortunately (from a health point of view) plus instant gas hot water and my monthly bill even in the middle of winter is $100. This is with 4 people who all have long showers.
I’ve been wondering about that, thanks. I’m a renter so I have no choice about what equipment I get, but I currently have a gas stove top with an electric oven. What I’ve been trying to figure out is if it’s better or less expensive to use the oven over the stove for things like soups, beans or other slower cooked things. Do you happen to know?
I know that gas is obviously going to be less energy usage for quickly pan-frying, but heating up the oven also requires heating a larger space and might not be better overall. :/
Small induction hob and small airfryer will use less electricity and cover both those needs. Depends on how much cooking you do, how extravagant. You can carry them with you from place to place as an investment so you could buy more quality items.
I tend to cook volume, and surface space in the kitchen is at a premium, so I’m not keen to buy new electrics. I assume the CO2 from the production of those would exceed environmental benefits too. The microwave is about the only additional device i use.
I might consider that induction hob for balcony cooking though… I do avoid cooking some things due to smell and smoke.
I assume the CO2 from the production of those would exceed environmental benefits too
TLDR - Your gas stove is likely emitting somewhere between 2kg and 10kg of CO2 “equivalent” per hour. It’s difficult to know exactly how much but even at the low end that’s a massive amount of carbon. It might actually be more missions than commuting to work every day in a 4WD.
There’s a lot of miss-information around on the subject - and the gas industry has been caught spreading miss-information (or at least misleading information).
For example often they only cite CO2 - they ignore Methane entirely and Methane causes 84x more warming than CO2. Often they say “Methane only lasts for 12 years in the atmosphere, but CO2 lasts for hundreds of years!” when in reality after the 12 years are up, all of the Methane becomes CO2 and continues to contribute to climate change for hundreds of years.
Another thing they often ignore is leaks - gas is very hard to contain especially in remote locations where they pump the stuff out of the ground. The surrounding area near the gas plant literally has methane seeping into the air through the ground. How much methane? Who knows, because they’re not as diligent at taking measurements as they should be and they call the police whenever they catch anyone else taking measurements. Sometimes you can see methane bubbles if it happens to leak underwater… but most of the leaks don’t happen underwater. When it leaks int to the air it’s impossible to detect without expensive equipment.
I might consider that induction hob for balcony cooking though… I do avoid cooking some things due to smell and smoke.
Kmart sells them for fifty bucks, they are tiny and light weight. About the same size and weight as a lid for one of your pots.
They’re not as good as a fancy 10 kilowatt unit that needs to be installed by an electrician — but they’re still very very good. Better (and cheaper) than all but the most expensive gas cooktops… and since you’re renting, I assume you have a cheap gas cooktop?
The main advantage of an induction cooktop is they heat your pot directly. A gas stove heats up the air underneath the pot which is radically less efficient. Really the only drawback is how well it works depends on the materials in your pot. Some of yours might not work (pretty much all modern “good” pots do work).
Noted, thanks. I didn’t realise quite how much gas contributes.
I assume I have a cheap gas stove as well, but it’s the only time I’ve ever had gas, so I would never know the difference.
Time to check my pans with a magnet!
There’s more research on gas hobs now more than anything. It’s straight up pollution inside the house. It’s your call, of course.
I have a gas stove too, we use the induction when we can. Just to reduce the load.
Ugh fine, maybe I can find a bit of wood for the stove to convert it to a surface and then put an airfryer on top. Goddamn it.
I can’t do anything about my gas hot water though.
We tend to use both, I thought the wood thing too. Piece of glass better? Induction does the more gas “heavy” work. You can buy portable stoves that have more than a couple of burners as well.
If the gas hot water is outside, out of sight eh? We have a gas backup that was installed prior, it’s home to some tree frogs so is never turned on.
Depends what I can find really, I’m on no income at the moment but surrounded by people who are constantly throwing out furniture, so odds are I’ll find a piece of laminate MDF that fits.
The gas water is a communal apartment block thing, all I know for certain is that I pay for what gas my hot water uses. Truth be told 95% of my cost is just the monthly connection fee for AGL.
Not to mention gas cooking increases childhood asthma.
Cooking with gas is estimated to be responsible for up to 12% of Australia’s childhood asthma burden https://www.nationalasthma.org.au/living-with-asthma/resources/patients-carers/factsheets/gas-stoves-and-asthma-in-children
The big bad Greenies are not going to storm into your house to take away the BBQ.
The one that sits outside unused and is a habitat for spiders? Or the one out front for hard waste collection because it’s rusted to shit?
They’re hippies, they’ll take whatever isn’t bolted down.
Edit: Haha, look at the downvotes. It’s a joke people. I identify as Green and a partial hippy, have you not looked at my post history!
Gas stoves are also slower than electric stoves for cooking (not, as is usually assumed, faster). And even if you don’t care about the climate at a large scale, they’re beneficial on a personal level because gas stoves can quite significantly reduce your indoor air quality in a way that electric simply does not.
That, plus the economic arguments made in other comments, plus the broader climate arguments, basically make it a no-brainer: there’s no reason to be using gas for cooking in 2023.
I don’t know as much about the gas for heating argument, though considering heat pumps can be up to 500% efficient it seems pretty unlikely that gas will fair much better for heating than it does for cooking (except, possibly, for some of the most extreme cold areas—much colder than any of Australia’s major cities).
Yeah, the only faster gas stoves are wok burners and those use a fuckload of gas to run. They’re really only suited to cooking certain dishes. I have one alongside my outdoor grill. Induction can’t quite replicate a wok burner yet.
The amount of smoke good wok cooking makes, you’re very off outside anyway.
