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What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

latimes.com

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Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#311

Post by brewdad »

wrycoder wrote: post #298
Tiktaalik wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Vancouver, where 54% of CO2 emissions is natural gas use in buildings, the City has recently banned natural gas use in new building construction, however they did leave the door open to allowing natural gas use for cooking and fireplace. I suppose the dominant amount of CO2 is coming from water heating and home heating. Perhaps there are some allowances for restaurants as well. I think that would make sense to me.…

Does that include the CO2 from power generation?

It is far easier and cheaper to capture CO2 emissions at the generation source than at each single point of use. Longer term, we build a cleaner grid.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#312

Post by sroussey »

brewdad wrote: post #306
pao wrote: post #288

Seems like a lot of the interest in these bans is coming from new research like this [Stanford study]( https://news.stanford.edu/2022/01/27/rethinking-cooking-gas/ ) showing gas stoves emit more methane than previously thought. They say all residential stoves in the US emit GHG equivalent to 500,000 cars. There are 276 million cars in the US. So, this problem is about 1/500 of the car problem. If you eliminated all s…

Why would this disincentivize construction? If anything, building a home without gas infrastructure should be cheaper. Lower building costs. One less utility meter to be installed. Reduced "impact" charges. Assuming it doesn't lead to a decrease in new home demand vs older homes with gas, this should be a boon to the construction industry.

People don’t want a lack of gas line. Those that care can turn their own gas off, yet sell to someone that does care.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#313

Post by daniel-cussen »

chrisseaton wrote: post #69
Mikeb85 wrote: post #65

In Europe almost everyone and many (most?) restaurants are electric-only. It means nothing for restaurants except they'll need to get electric appliances and grills will be slightly less common (since electric grills aren't great and solid fuel grills require their own hood vent).

> many (most?) restaurants are electric-only. Are you in the restaurant industry? Maybe you know more than me, but about 3/4 of restaurants I go to in Europe have open kitchens, and I mean it's completely obvious that every single one of them is using gas, as you can literally see the flames, and I guess those with closed kitchens it's similar, so I can't square what you're saying with my own eyes.

Second. It's just not cooking with electric, it sucks. It's not an adequate substitute the way electric heat is a substitute for gas heat. Not equivalent.

I think it's ineconomical, takes too long to cook for a restaurant, just fucking sucks. It fucking sucks. Big gas ranges are the best, especially if they produce a huge flame and you can cook your bacon quickly and really get it nice, crispy. With electric the bacon ends up slimey.

Plus it takes for ever to boil anything, no more soup.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#314

Post by mandevil »

the_third_wave wrote: post #223
taylodl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignore the fact that we are going to switch off Diablo Nuclear Power plant and replace it with gas plants. That's a bit disingenuous. Those units were brought online in 1985 and 1986 and are licensed to operate through 2025. That's forty years - which is the life span of a power plant, especially a nuclear power plant. So, they're not being "switched off", they've hit end-of-life. Building a new nuclear power station…

If the US is no longer able to create nuclear power stations the reason for the failure is to be found in the regulatory overload, not in the technical ability. The solution therefore is to prune the regulators, not in building new gas-firing plants to replace nuclear power stations whose life can be extended while saving billions of dollars while keeping emissions at the same (very low) level as they've done since t…

Europe seems to have the exact same problems with building nuclear power plants that the US does, which suggests that the problem is not with individual regulators who need to be replaced.

Consulting the current list of nuclear power plants under construction around the world by a pro-nuclear power agency here: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu...

I see the following as the only ones still under construction in all of Europe (not counting Belarus and Russia): 1) Mochovce 3 in Slovakia. Construction started November 2008, originally scheduled to complete in 2012, now hopefully complete later this year, so 15 years total, 10 years late. 2) Flamenville 3 in France. Construction started in 2007, originally scheduled to complete in 2012. Hopefully complete in 2023, so 16 years later, 11 years late. 3) Mochovce 4 in Slovakia. Construction started November 2008, original scheduled to complete in 2013, now hopefully complete in 2023, so 16 years total, 10 years late. 4,5) Hinkley Point C1 and C2 in the UK. Construction started in roughly 2008[1], originally expected to be online 2022 or so ("early 2020s" is the best I can find with Google now, and that's for both C1 and C2 to be online). Now C1 is expected to be complete in 2027, and C2 in 2028. So 19-20 years total, 6 years late.

(The US has two reactors on the list, Vogtle 3 and 4, started in 2009, originally expected to finish in 2016 and 2017, now expected to finish in 2023.)

South Korea has 4 reactors under construction right now (plus two they are building in the UAE). India has 8, China has 19, and Russia has 3 (plus 4 they are building in Turkey, 1 in Belarus, 2 in Bangladesh). Argentina has their first indigenous design under construction- and that appears to be it, as far as nuclear power plant construction goes around the world.

One or more of those countries might have things figured out, but whatever problems the US has seem to be happening across the developed world (minus potentially South Korea), which suggests that it really is not a case where firing a few rogue regulators will fix things.

[1]: The Hinkley Point story is a complete flustercluck of nonsense.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#315

Post by stcredzero »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #275

A large reason electric (restive and induction) are seen as inferior to gas is that portable units are limited to 120v/15a (few are 20a) so the total possible power is technically less than a gas stove; 2800w effective. However, gas stoves are very inefficient so in reality it's not a huge problem and 240v electric stoves could even be hotter (~4000w) than a gas stove. > Xie estimates that he pays around $500 to $700…

> A large reason electric (restive and induction) are seen as inferior to gas is that portable units are limited to 120v/15a (few are 20a) so the total possible power is technically less than a gas stove; 2800w effective. However, gas stoves are very inefficient so in reality it's not a huge problem and 240v electric stoves could even be hotter (~4000w) than a gas stove.

Could a combination of induction heating and heat pumps be developed to be hyper-efficient for cooking? Such a system would have to include the vent hood as well, and require the cooks to don insulated gloves. The idea would be to also recover heat going up the vent hood, then concentrate the heat in a stream of hot air which would hit the pans/woks again. Is this even feasible or desirable?

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#316

Post by goodpoint »

elil17 wrote: post #160
gwbas1c wrote: post #146

Is hydrogen practical? What about other forms of bio-gas? Personally I wonder if shutting down the gas network for cooking, and backup generators, is short-sighted. It seems to make more sense to push for mixing in carbon neutral gas sources and letting cost be more of a motivating factor. IE: I pay about $20 a month for gas in the summer when I just use it for cooking and grilling. They could swap in carbon-neutral…

Yeah, it's absolutely short sighted. Gas appliances are more efficient than electric appliances powered by natural gas fired power plants. While hydrogen might be a way's away (plus it requires redesigning everything), people (for example, Oberon fuels in California) are already mixing renewable dimethyl ether (similar to propane, but the central carbon atom is an oxygen atom) with propane in tanks for gas grills. St…

> Gas appliances are more efficient than electric appliances powered by natural gas fired power plants

The very opposite is true. Gas cooking surfaces waste 75% of the heat into air.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#317

Post by brewdad »

eric-hu wrote: post #101
CWuestefeld wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right now, there are thermal properties around materials like copper which will not work with induction that mean there are things that simply can't be done with them, and resistive electric is horribly non-responsive. As it happens, the latest installment of Technology Connections [1] does direct comparisons of the time required to boil a volume of water on various cooktop technologies. The winner was a cheap electr…

I think you’re off in your analogy. Parent comment is closer to the 0-60 time because of the responsiveness, and you’re referring to time to move a 1000 lbs mass to 60. When I see “responsive” in terms of cooking and gas, I think of wok cooking (mentioned in the article too) where 100k BTUs are needed for a few seconds at a time to combust atomized oil droplets flipped over the edge of the wok. Combusting that oil pr…

Is it even legal to install 100k BTU burner in a residential application? I have a reasonably nice cooktop and the total BTUs of all burners is significantly less than 100k.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#318

Post by dynm »

This article is all about climate change and cooking. But in case anyone is interested, I got interested in the health effects of gas stoves vs. induction a few months back. I was frustrated that no one seemed to give the magnitude of the harm. My conclusion was that using a gas stove for your entire life rather than an electric cooktop plausibly creates enough enough NO2 to reduce life expectancy by a couple of months: https://dynomight.net/stoves/ (this is high uncertainty, of course)

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#319

Post by brewdad »

jacquesm wrote: post #205
cecilpl2 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boiling water is a proxy for rate at which energy can be delivered to food. Heating a pan up to temp is much faster on induction than gas.

Sure, but it's not just about energy transfer, it is also about temperature stability, ability to ramp up and down in a short time, ability to deliver that heat gradually. You can't compare an immersion coil with an induction plate or a gas stove directly by only looking at the energy transfer efficiency. There is much more to it than that.

I'm still not seeing the problem. Remove pan from the immersion coil and heat delivery ceases immediately. Adjusting the rate of heat delivery also happens quickly. There may be some cases where you have to alter technique a bit from what you are used to but, aside from wok cooking, I can't think of anything that you can cook over gas that you can't cook on an induction top.

Re: What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

#320

Post by danShumway »

briandear wrote: post #261
chociej wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer Reports, for one, is happy to report that "No other cooking technology we’ve tested is faster than induction." I would think a lot of the advantages of induction are really obvious, so I don't think your statement that they are "inferior to gas in every way" is particularly in good faith. No gas in a building should be obviously advantageous. Reduced ability to cause burns or fires too. Reduction of use of a…

Why can’t people have the choice for gas or induction? Why must government tell us what kind of stove to use? If reducing greenhouse gases from stoves matters to you, you can make the choice to do that.

I think this mostly comes down to externalities. I somewhat doubt that consumer usage of gas stoves actually matters that much to emissions (though it might be important for getting rid of gas lines, possibly), but in the abstract people doing something with a negative universal externality isn't a purely private choice.

It's a bit like saying, "if you care about the neighborhood being quieter, then you're free to turn off your own radio at night, but don't yell at me for blasting a boombox at 4AM, that's my choice". The greenhouse gases you let out don't stay on your property, they "trespass" onto everybody else's -- so it's more difficult for me to view pollution as a purely individual choice because air pollution is effectively dumping waste onto other people's land.

Of course, sometimes there are ways we can influence outcomes without outright banning things. Maybe you're allowed to play your boombox at full volume at 4AM but have to pay an noise tax? Maybe we subsidize replacing your boombox with an iPod and some decent headphones? Policy is complicated.

But even if you approach this from a pure Libertarian perspective, Libertarianism has a concept of conflicting rights and acknowledges that a recursive "right to infringe other people's rights" doesn't actually work and is reasonable in many situations to ban. I suspect that the pure Libertarian perspective would be that you can burn as much carbon as you like as long as those emissions stay entirely on your property and aren't being dumped into the collective atmosphere for everyone else to deal with.

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