Everyone deserves access to safe and sustainable cooking
The clean energy revolution has happened. But cooking has been left in the cold, with the majority of people around the world still burning unsafe and unsustainable fuels in their kitchens. Gas, including LPG, is still the dominant cooking fuel globally. And gas use is increasing, despite decades of peer-reviewed research demonstrating gas releases toxins that are dangerous for our health and drive climate change.
Over the past forty years, multiple scientific studies have revealed worrying health impacts caused by gas cooking.
Research shows that children living in a home with a gas stove have a 42% increased risk of having current asthma and a 24% greater chance of being diagnosed with asthma at some point in life. Recent studies from UCLA show that households using gas cooking can have higher levels of air pollution inside than is legal to have outdoors.
Induction cooktops are the most sophisticated cooktops on the market today.
And the plummeting price of renewable energy means electric cooking solutions are increasingly more affordable than fossil fuels in many countries around the world, including in low- and middle-income countries.
The negative health impacts of gas are compounded by gas’ impact on the global climate. Methane is the primary component of gas, and as stated by Harvard University, “methane has more than 80 times the warming power of CO2 in its first 20 years in the atmosphere, setting the pace for near term warming.”
According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook, cooking resulted in 498 Mt of CO2 emissions in 2020. The agency does not attribute these emissions to individual fuels, but given the dominant use of gas and LPG in cooking globally, these fuels are likely responsible for a significant proportion of these emissions.*
The 498 Mt of CO2 emissions generated by cooking in 2020 is roughly equivalent to the total CO2 emissions of Australia.
However, this emissions footprint is the tip of the iceberg.
A Stanford University-led study showed that 75 percent of methane leaking from gas cooking happens when the stoves are off. So current emissions estimates for gas cooking fail to account for indoor “fugitive” emissions.
Footage of electric pressure cooking in Kenya courtesy of CLASP
*Note that due to the approach to carbon accounting adopted by the IEA, emissions from biomass combustion are not included in this total.
Globally, more than 2.5 billion people still rely on solid fuels like biomass and coal as their primary cooking fuel. As a result, 3.2 million people a year die prematurely because of indoor air pollution, according to the World Health Organization.
Until recently, electricity has been considered an impractical solution for low- and middle-income countries urgently needing to transition communities off deadly solid fuels. But solar power is now the cheapest energy source in history. That, alongside major advances in appliance energy efficiency, means electric cooking solutions have become a cost-effective solution in many low- and middle-income countries.
Footage of electric pressure cooking in Kenya courtesy of CLASP
The built environment sector has a crucial role to play in the transition to electric cooking.
Though electric cooking solutions are better for our health and the climate, built environment leaders are going electric for financial reasons. For both commercial and residential builds, electric cooking saves money in construction and operations.
Because renewable energy provides the cheapest power in history, electric cooking solutions are also increasingly affordable for new builds in low- and middle-income countries where 3.2 million people per year are dying from illnesses related to household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels and kerosene.
Footage of electric pressure cooking in Kenya courtesy of CLASP
