- cross-posted to:
- upliftingnews@lemmit.online
- australia@aussie.zone
- cross-posted to:
- upliftingnews@lemmit.online
- australia@aussie.zone
Cooking on gas is the one environmentally damaging thing I don’t want to give up, I’ll admit…
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Could we please instead do something about the global shipping and trucking industries? Hell, even clothing production creates more CO2 emissions than shipping and trucking combined. I would gladly sacrifice more shitty clothes for the ability to cook a decent meal.
You fail to understand just how big a large container ship is. If a shirt comes on a ship from China, the truck taking it from the warehouse to the shop emits more CO2 for that shirt than the ship did bringing it from to the port. In fact, if you walk for ten minutes to the shop and back, you have emitted more CO2 than the ship did to carry that shirt. A container ship emits a large total amount of CO2 because it’s very big, carrying a massive amount of cargo. But overall, shipping is one of the most efficient modes of transport we’ve invented.
It’s not an either/or, we need to do both. Plus a lot of other things that everyone refuses to do or complains about because they think something else should be done by someone else first.
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Induction cook tops are so great. I can’t imagine going back to gas.
This screams “what are the low hanging fruits that are quick wins” approach that the gov probs got from some consulting firm.
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Electric appliances are generally cheaper to install, and now that gas prices have gone up are also cheaper to operate. There may be some benefit to manufacturers of electric appliances, but that is negated by the impact on the manufacturers of gas appliances. Installation of gas appliances often involved two tradespeople as there is often an electric component, so I would expect overall for there to be slightly less work for installers and trades overall too.
Gas companies have pushed stoves as a way to get gas hookups which tend to also include heat and hot water. The latter use far, far more energy than cooking so they make more money.
I’m not sure how much usage adds to their bottom line these days, but the supply charge definitely keeps going up. I had a look at my figures for gas last year - I paid $392 total, $262 of that was the supply charge. If I expected to be in this house longer (or if the water heater hadn’t been recently upgraded) I would definitely be considering changing over. The ongoing costs being cheap used to make gas the most economical option, but I think electric is the better deal these days.
Victoria is running out of gas. There isn’t as much easily extracted gas left in Bass Strait. We also use more gas now, being more dependent on it for electricity generation than in the past. We’re now resorting to having gas shipped in from Western Australia, having to compete on price with China who also want the gas from WA. Gas is just going to keep becoming more expensive, but Melbourne and the rest of Victoria was built around the assumption that there will always be cheap and effectively unlimited gas flowing in from Bass Strait.
We need to do something about this now, before it gets to the point that there just isn’t enough gas and we have to resort to rationing. The environmental angle is nice and all, and makes people feel better about complying. But it needs to happen anyway, just for economic and practical reasons. And getting rid of gas appliances in homes is an easy win with the added benefit that you’re removing a source of combustion byproducts from homes, yielding health benefits.
The dairy processing industry in particular is very dependent on burning gas to generate heat for all their processes. They have facilities for using diesel in emergencies (which they had to use in the gas crisis near the end of the ’90s), but getting them off gas entirely is going to be a lot harder than switching to induction stoves and electric hot water. Gas-fired power plants are going to be here for a while, especially because they can throttle up and down relatively quickly which is important if you need to respond to drops in output from wind and solar.
Doing the easiest things first just makes sense. And it’s not like the Victorian government has a great influence over the international shipping industry which will need a coordinated international effort to solve.
We need both
induction ranges are like soooooo much better than gas, my parents got one and the range of power it can put out is much larger than any gas stove I’ve used and it doesn’t make the room hot
Like woks?
You can get super fancy induction cook tops that work with conventional woks but even better you can get woks designed to work with conventional induction cook tops.
It’d be hard to make the choice for the induction top without trying it. We have a resistive range/hob so I have a 15kbtu butane burner I use with my wok and it’s so, so much better.
If induction was good enough for the cost they wouldn’t have to force people. It’s going to be cheaper to buy bog standard shit that works how you’d expect with a gas burner. Maybe poor people don’t deserve good fried rice.
It’s great. Really much better than gas in my opinion.
Realistically, how likely is it that this whole gas system we’ve been using will look batshit crazy in the future.
We build a city wide network of pipes carrying flamable gas … so we can all have a nicer cooking experience despite alternatives being basically mainstream? What?!
Plenty of comments in here about induction being better or as good with different strengths/weaknesses. IME, I agree completely, I much prefer induction now.
But just recently I had to downgrade to the “crappy” electric stove tops. And you know what … it’s fine. Seriously, you get used to it and cook decently enough. There’s probably a lot of “preciousness” around cooking and kitchens TBH.
The thing about gas stoves is that they release pollutants in your house. It spikes CO, CO2 and a bunch of other combustion residue.
How different stoves work for you partly depends on what types of things you cook, but there are also a lot of variations in how crappy standard electric stoves are.
I’ve used old coil stoves that were not that bad, but my mother’s new glass topped thing was so awful I learnt not to even try cooking some dishes. If you needed to brown anything you had to put the pan on for a 10-15 minute preheat to get anywhere near hot enough, then if you needed to reduce the heat to simmer it was best to just move to another burner if you could because it would take 5+ minutes to cool down. The top heat was just enough to brown something if you left it a long time and did not crowd the pan, but doing something like searing a steak or making a stir-fry just wasn’t possible.
But then I’ve also used gas stoves that are hard to work with and don’t have much control over the temperature - even my current stove I tend to switch burners to accommodate different heat levels better. So I guess a lot comes down to having the right specific stove to meet your requirements, more than being just a gas vs. electric issue. Having previously believed I’d never want anything other than gas I have been pretty impressed by the portable induction cooker I’ve been trying out, and I’m sure a better quality model would suit me for pretty much everything.
I would contend that electric cooktops have only started being decent relatively recently (specifically induction).
The coils ones are crummy, the “hot plate” ones are frustratingly slow and as you mentioned the glass ones aren’t any better (unless induction).
Can anyone recommend what to look for in an induction cooktop? I’ve only briefly used one at my Mum’s place and I hated it. Finnicky digital bastard of a thing, and if your fingers are wet, you can’t press the buttons. But it’s probably better to cook on than the old electric solid hot-plate thing we have now that takes aeons to either heat up, or two aeons to cool down.
induction is not about the buttons, induction is the method of heat transfer between the cook top and your pots. Just look for one wiht better phyiscal buttons that are not digital-ish. Miele and Bosch are usually safe bets.
I hate the trend of appliances and new devices moving away from old fashioned buttons and dials. My drier recently glitched out and unlike my old school ones that had physical switches to adjust, but new one is just digital tap sensors. I could pause it by opening the door, but in order to get it out of whatever glitch it got stuck in I had to literally pull the plug.
I have heard they have induction stoves that arent digital nonsense though.
Saying that, for stoves it makes cleaning them so much easier
