Goodbye Gas Stove Dream?

Our first apartment had a 3/4 size gas stove that was likely an antique. My clearest memory of that stove was when we returned from a trip to Ontario and found our apartment (top floor of a house in Kits) was being rewired. A side effect of this was that the furnace was off so it was late September (or was it October?) and our place was cold. We would light the oven and open the door and sit in front of it to stay warm. It wasn’t a gourmet range by any stretch. It wasn’t even full size and now that I think of it, I think we had to light it with a match, but a gas stove has always been on our list of things we wanted in our dream kitchen. It’s odd because i didn’t grow up with one and neither did Sarah so what is it about a gas stove? Is it just a fire thing? Instant heat and instant off as soon as you turn it off? Too many cooking shows?

We have bought a couple of stoves in our lives but the first time we had no gas in our kitchen (and no money to get it installed) and the second time when we did have gas in the kitchen, we were still in financial shock from buying this house and were counting our pennies again. The only gas stoves in our budget at the time were basic and barely better than that first stove. A gas stove has been high on the list of things we want as part of our new kitchen. I have been window shopping my dream stove for months. Nothing too fancy mind you as we are still on a budget and space is limited. We want to keep it at the standard 30″ but I have been hoping for a dual fuel range with a gas cooktop and an electric oven. They are a lot more common these days and even with the 30″ width you can get 5 burner units or ones with a griddle.

But then we went for a walk with Dave. (We know lots of Dave’s. It’s like Kids in the Hall sometimes. This Dave is Nicola’s Dave.)

Dave has opinions about things. Lots of opinions. And he likes to share. The thing is though, unlike many people who share opinions, Dave is a scientist and does his research (not through facebook either!) so his opinions are usually based on facts. Maybe it is more accurate to say that Dave has facts and shares his facts. Dave and Nicola are also foodies and do a lot of cooking and baking and know their way around a kitchen so when we started to talk about appliances and I mentioned these dual fuel ranges i had been looking at Dave shared some facts:

1. GHG’s: Why when we are talking about reducing our GHG footprint would we even consider a gas stove? We have already put in a high efficiency furnace and a tankless water heater to reduce our GHG emissions and had just discussed replacing our never used wood fireplace with an electric insert rather than gas for the same reason. We had talked about heat pumps and were about to insulate and air seal our house all in the name of efficiency so why would we want to switch to cooking with dead dinosaurs after all that? He made a valid point, but as I pointed out, i never claimed to be above a little hypocrisy every now and then. I am as human as the next guy.
   
2. Indoor Air Quality: This one had a bigger impact on me and was something i hadn’t even considered. Gas stoves are not good for your indoor air quality apparently. Yes, proper ventilation helps (always use your range hood) and new gas stoves are much more efficient and cleaner burning than old stoves, but overall, homes with gas stoves have higher levels of NO₂ than homes without. Exposure to NO₂ is bad for you and worse for children leading to increased risk of asthma. That can’t be good.
   
3. The Future: With the Greta generation pushing for GHG reductions and drastic changes to reduce climate change, the future of fossil fuels is uncertain. Most of the large car companies have already pledged to change to electric only in the next 10 to 15 years. The City of Vancouver is moving forward on policies to restrict the use of natural gas in an effort to be a green city, so why do we want to invest in something today that might be illegal within it’s lifespan? While natural gas is relatively cheap and plentiful now, the industry is going to go through some dramatic changes and with production costs spread over fewer markets the economics of it could change in the coming years.

Luckily we still have a few weeks to make the decision about whether to run gas into the kitchen and several months before we even think about ordering a stove but we are now looking at an induction range. Induction is the most efficient choice for a cooktop with more than double the efficiency of gas (another nail, sigh) and 10 to 15% more efficiency than a traditional coil cooktop. The whole point might be academic though because the way the budget looks, a new stove for us is looking like a 2022 decision once the suite is rented.