Author: Sarah J Simon

Buildings account for approximately 40% of global carbon emissions. Up here in the Boston area, where we still have winter, only our cars and trucks emit more greenhouse gas emissions than burning heating oil and “natural” gas in our homes and other buildings.”Natural Gas,” is actually fossilized carbon from ancient plants and critters buried deep underground for more than 100 million years (think flourishing dinosaurs, etc). So, I’ll be saying “fossil gas” as I write about the methane piped to our homes and power plants as an energy source.

What we’ve blindly ignored is that burning fossil gas inside our homes makes health-impacting pollution. Combustion of this fuel produces nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matter (PM), and carbon monoxide (CO). And you’re creating high levels of these pollutants in your kitchen when you use your gas stove.

Hopefully, you already know about how deadly CO is, from your home carbon monoxide detectors and those sad stories about people dying from CO because they were idling their cars or using propane heaters in closed garages.

EPA also regulates PM and NOx outdoors because at high concentrations, PM causes asthma and NOx makes smog on hot days, when the warning goes out for “poor, or unhealthful” air quality.

How can you stop putting your kids’ health in danger (and yours)? With electric heating and cooking.

Thankfully, you can burn less gas for heating by plugging leaks from outside and other weatherization. And, the Mothers Out Front – Massachusetts campaign for Clean Heat/ Clean Air wants to let you know about two efficient kinds of low polluting and less dangerous equipment that can replace the fossil gas in your home – electric induction cooking and heat pumps.

Induction cooktops, which have been used in Europe and by many world-famous chefs, turn on and of with a touch. They turn the heat up or down as quickly as that knob on the gas burner you currently use on your gas stove. Electric induction heats up your iron pots by magnetism. The cooktop doesn’t even gethot! No more possibility of explosive gas leaks (Aren’t these great safety features?).

Heat pumps have been around for a while – they’ve been moving heat out of your refrigerator to your kitchen, and out of air conditioned homes to the outdoors for decades. But recently, updated designs have made them much more efficient and built in the ability to reverse direction – move heat from outside in. So they are now an economical way to heat homes – forget those old stories about how much it costs to use your current electric baseboard or portable heaters. Hot water heaters can use heat pumps, too.

All to say:

• Think about using electricity for energy in your kitchen and home.
• Try out a single “burner” cooktop plugged into your wall outlet in the kitchen. (But not for most of your non-stick pans. Almost all are aluminum, which is not magnetic).
• Plan for electric the next time you replace your gas, or electric, stove
• Or for the day your furnace or central AC unit breaks down.

It’s time to move away from fossil gas (and oil) and give our children, and the generations to come, a beautiful, flourishing planet.