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By Elena Shao | Photographs by Talia Herman for The Wall Street Journal
July 17, 2021 5:30 am ET

Gas-fired stoves are emerging as a burning issue as American cities consider phasing out natural-gas hookups to homes and businesses to reduce carbon emissions.

Many restaurant and home chefs prefer cooking on gas-burning ranges, and persuading some to switch to electric stovetops is proving to be a hard sell—a sentiment the natural-gas industry has seized on to rally opposition to new local ordinances.

Several cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, have given ground on the issue by exempting stoves from natural-gas bans, or providing pathways for restaurants to secure waivers in an attempt to minimize blowback.

The pushback on stoves demonstrates one of the challenges of reducing the emissions linked to climate change: Consumers may have to make personal sacrifices by giving up things they use and enjoy in favor of less familiar technologies.

George Chen, executive chef and founder of San Francisco restaurant China Live, said he was concerned about cities restricting a cooking technique that contributes to the texture and flavor of good Chinese cuisine that he said can’t be achieved on an electric stove . . . .

Proponents of electrification say today’s induction stoves, which use electromagnetic current to directly heat cookware, are much better than the electric cooktops of yesteryear and—once cooks learn to use them—superior to gas, too. But some restaurant industry groups and others have pushed back against efforts to force them to make the switch.

When Berkeley, Calif., became the first U.S. city to ban natural-gas connections to new homes and businesses two years ago, the California Restaurant Association sued. It argued that the restriction would harm establishments that use the fossil fuel to flame-sear meat, char vegetables and wok-toss rice and noodles. A federal judge dismissed the challenge earlier this month; the restaurant group said it plans to appeal the decision.

Since then, several dozen other U.S. municipalities, including Denver and New York, have either passed or proposed measures that ban or restrict natural gas in new or substantially renovated buildings with the hopes it will help achieve goals of reducing the carbon emissions linked to climate change. In turn, a number of states, including Texas and Georgia, have moved to prohibit local jurisdictions from enacting such bans before more cities can catch on.

The local measures would require the installation of heat pumps and electric appliances instead of gas-powered furnaces, water heaters, ovens and stoves, which are currently the norm in most of the country. Nationwide, fossil fuels burned for energy in businesses and homes sit at 13% of annual carbon emissions, according to 2019 data from the EPA.

Gas stoves’ contributions to emissions are negligible compared with the gas used to heat homes and water. Less than 3% of natural-gas use in homes comes from cooking on gas stoves, according to a 2015 residential energy survey from the U.S. Energy Information Administration . . . .

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cities-...d=hp_lead_pos9