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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now our climate story of the week. One of the first new bills to be introduced in the new Republican House of Representatives is a ban on banning gas stoves. It's a ban on a ban. It comes as states, including New York plan to require all new construction to have electric, not gas appliances for cooking and heating because electric power produces so much less greenhouse gas emissions. Over 20 states have now passed prohibitions on local government bans of gas stoves.

States are going in exactly opposite directions from each other. At the national level, House Republicans have now introduced the spill. This was last Thursday to stop the Consumer Product Safety Commission from banning gas stoves Federally. Why now? This comes after a commissioner on the Consumer Product Safety Commission, told Bloomberg News that "any option is on the table" as they evaluate the risks of gas stoves and not just climate risks, but also asthma risks and some other things at ground levels.

We'll talk about that too. Rumors started swirling after that comment about a national ban and set off the latest battle in the so-called culture wars. Here is, I have it right here the name, they all have these acronyms, the name of the bill was introduced by Congressman Bill Huizenga of Michigan. It is the stop trying to obsessively Vilify Energy Act. What are the first letters of those words? Well, they spell out STOVE, Stop Trying to Obsessively Vilify Energy, STOVE, Act. Here in New York, what's the situation? Well, a couple of years ago, the New York City Council passed a bill banning gas hookups in new buildings.

During her state of the state address, just the other day, Governor Hochul proposed more regulations to phase out gas stoves and gas-powered heating in new construction statewide. Joining us now, Somini Sengupta, international climate reporter for The New York Times and lead writer for the Climate Forward newsletter, to dig into what the science says about risks that gas stoves may pose to our health and to the environment. We'll also discuss why gas stoves have recently become a political flashpoint. Maybe you saw Somini's piece just the other day and called About That Gas Stove. Hi, Somini. Welcome back to WNYC.

Somini Sengupta: Hi, Brian. Before we get to the science, should we just dispense with the puns because there's been a political firestorm over gas stoves? Maybe you have some burning questions about gas stoves or maybe we just need to vent for a while more about gas stoves. Okay, now we're done.

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad we got them out of the way. That also is an excuse to give out the phone number right away for people using any kind of stoves or but no more puns because Somini used them all. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Do we need to define a gas stove before we really get into the politics or the science?

Somini Sengupta: Sure. By gas, really, we're talking about gas whose main ingredient is methane. Really, technically, it should be called methane gas, but you might have heard it referred to more often as natural gas. All fossil fuels derive from nature, and so it is natural in that sense. It's a fossil fuel and its principal component is methane, which is it's a greenhouse gas and it heats up the atmosphere really, really fast.

Just before we get too far, maybe we should also just clarify that there's actually no ban proposed on gas stoves by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. They've made that pretty clear. They're not proposing a ban. They're not coming after gas stoves and taking them away from people's kitchens.

Brian Lehrer: Some cities and states are, right?

Somini Sengupta: Not exactly. Some cities and states have regulations in place that say no new gas connections in new construction.

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Brian Lehrer: A ban to that degree.

Somini Sengupta: Yes, so far it applies to new construction

Brian Lehrer: There are debates, we've had one on this show about how much to require retrofitting. Give us another one of the basics here. How much better for the climate are electric stoves? We've already had callers in the past on this show saying, wait, electricity is generated by power plants, which are sometimes some of the most climate-polluting facilities in the country. Electricity uses power just like a gas stove uses power. How much better for the climate are our electric stoves and gas ones?

Somini Sengupta: Right. It's a really good question. There are two things to keep in mind. One, where does your electricity come from? Which is just what you are referring to. In New York, most of our electricity still comes from fossil fuels, very polluting fossil fuels. Just switching out from a gas appliance to an electrical appliance doesn't solve that problem. However, New York State has a goal to reduce its fossil fuel share in its electricity supply, a pretty ambitious goal is to reduce it pretty significantly by 2030. That's one piece of it.

The second piece of it is that buildings account for a pretty large chunk of greenhouse gas emissions in cities in particular. In New York City, buildings are 70% of our total greenhouse gas emissions, that's supposed to be reduced significantly again by 2030 according to New York City's climate goals. How much does a gas stove matter? It matters a bit. It matters significantly, but it matters less than, for example, heating with a gas boiler or hot water heaters that provide our hot showers by burning gas. Heating accounts for a larger share of the gas that we use in buildings compared to the gas that we use when we cook.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. One of the things that I've learned from your article on climate forward is that we're a more divided country when it comes to what kinds of stoves we use than I really had any idea. Maybe that's because I've lived most of my life in old New York City buildings where gas stoves are very common. You wrote that a majority of Americans use electric stoves. Is that a regional thing?

Somini Sengupta: That surprised me. I grew up all over the place. I grew up a lot in Southern California. When I was researching this newsletter piece, I learned that 40% of Americans roughly use gas stoves. It's mainly in the northeastern states, California and Nevada, and some of the Midwestern states around the Great Lakes. Everybody else, the majority of Americans use electric stoves, not the fancy new induction stoves, but a variety of old and new electric stoves. Some with just the coils that are exposed, some with the glass plates, that sit on top of the electric coils. Yes, we are a divided country, but it's not really your classic red-blue state divide. It's different.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Here's Marlena at the Jersey Shore. You're on WNYC. Hi, Marlena.

Marlena: Hello, Brian. I just replaced my gas range with an induction stove a few weeks ago, maybe right before Christmas. It seems pertinent to your conversation this morning. I always cooked with gas. There was really nothing wrong with my gas range. I had experience with some of my other appliances that took a very long time to replace. The gas range was going on over 10 years old and I thought I would have to wait several months before I would get a new one.

I had just had my house painted and I realized that the gas was causing darkness and not really soot, but I could tell that it left its residue on the ceiling. I decided I wanted to switch and I did some research and I decided to try induction, thinking that I wouldn't be getting it until the summer, and lo and behold, it was delivered the week before Christmas. I'm quite happy with it. There is a learning curve.

It's magnetic on the top, so you need certain kinds of pans, I had to get a plate because not all of my pans work on top of the stove. The one thing that I'm still learning on the cooktop is that if you remove the pan to, I don't know, stir or lower the heat or whatever, it's not hot anymore. Sometimes I'll move my pan to stir it and then I'll put it back on the stove thinking that it's going to warm up again, and it doesn't, you have to restart the stove.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, that's so interesting. It cools off instantly as soon as you remove it from the heat source.

Marlena: Exactly. It cools off right away. One of my concerns was I have a cat and he's a cat and he likes to jump up on things. I was somewhat concerned about him going on top of the flat surface because if he saw the fire on the gas range, he wouldn't jump up, but there's no glow or any indication that the stove is on other than the panel. The salesperson said, oh, you don't have to worry about that because when you take the pan off, the burner cools down, the pot stays hot, but the burner cools down.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. A cat being a cat is not in danger in that situation. Marlena, thank you for sharing all that. I think for a lot of people, so many like me who have gas stoves forever and ever and are electric stove ignorant, Marlena is saying some new things about there being different types like that magnetic, I think she said invection, but is the right word induction?

Somini Sengupta: Induction, yes. It works with a magnetic technology. She's absolutely right, when you put your pan on, that's when the induction stove gets hot and when you take it off, the induction stove cools down pretty quickly. That's safety feature with cats or young children, but as she said, it's probably something to get used to. I have a gas stove at home.

It would be pretty complicated for me because I live in a building to switch out the gas stove to an induction stove, they remain pretty expensive, although there are now rebates available through the Inflation Reduction Act, as you know, and there's some state rebates apparently as well in New York State designed to get people to switch to electric appliances.

Brian Lehrer: Some of the comments and questions that are coming in on Twitter are questioning whether this is really an important topic to focus on at all or relative to other climate-polluting questions that might be related. Like, why are we focusing on appliances as opposed to leaking unused wells or gasoline vehicles? Here's one this says, isn't the most effective way to reduce methane making the fossil fuel industry cap all the leaking wells? Please ask your guest.

Somini Sengupta: That is a very effective way. Is it the most, I don't know the answer to that right off the top of my head, but your audience is totally right to point out that this is not the by by any straps. This is not the largest source of methane pollution. Methane comes from the production of fossil gas, and fossil gas remains a large share of how we get electricity in this country. Yes, are there other things that account for a larger share of greenhouse gas emissions in your city or in your country, or for the world as a whole? Absolutely. Are there other reasons to be talking about gas stoves? Yes, probably including health reasons.

Brian Lehrer: Including asthma. Right?

Somini Sengupta: Including asthma. Absolutely. Because remember, there's indoor pollution and there's outdoor pollution. Outdoor pollution has a place to go, indoor pollution often doesn't have a place to go, particularly in kitchens like mine. I don't have a window in my kitchen. When I turn on my gas stove, and particularly when I turn on my gas oven, I did last night to make banana bread, it immediately filled my little apartment with the smell of gas. We're all familiar with that.

When I use my gas stove oven, I tend to open up my window, I crack open the window. Now, for most of us who live in the city, there's a lot of pollution coming in from outside when you open the window. Am I just getting rid of my, like some of the gas fumes and letting in a bunch of particulate matter from the street? Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Glenn in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Glenn.

Glenn: Hi, Brian. Longtime listener. I have to say, as somebody that is a licensed contractor in this city and has a stake in this whole gas argument, I find it appalling that we're sitting here talking about banning gas when the City of New York is funding Con Edison at the tune of close to $40 billion in installing new gas infrastructure.

When on a project that I have here in Manhattan, we spent $250,000 in the last year replacing all new gas lines for one apartment, for a fireplace, and for a stove, and the city passed them, the inspectors passed them, and yet, they shut us down and will not reconnect the gas because the city no longer wants anybody using gas. I don't understand why we're having infrastructure replaced here in the city a taxpayer expense, and yet, we're not allowed to use, "this product, natural gas."

Brian Lehrer: As a contractor, for people listening who might, for climate reasons or other reasons, want to switch from gas stoves to one kind or another of electric stoves, what's required? Is there more of electrification required? Do you have to rewire the breakers and everything?

Glenn: Absolutely, and you have to understand that most of these buildings, like the one that we're talking about, do not have enough electrical capacity, and new power has to be brought in from the street by Con Edison in order for these buildings to have this. The other thing I'll say is that I'm originally from Rochester, New York, and I was home at Christmas when that blizzard hit, all the power went out, but fortunately, my mother has gas heat.

Here we are relying on one form of energy, electricity, which is not always reliable when there's an outage and there's a need for it in the winter, and yet, you're trying to put everybody on electricity. All the electricity is created by natural gas for the most part in this state. I'm confused. It's like you're robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much for chiming in with all that. From your experience as a contractor, some challenging questions on the table there, Somini, I think we established that in the long run, the science seems to say that electrifying everything is going to be better for the climate than the status quo with as much gases there is, but you hear some of the other challenges.

Somini Sengupta: Look, we are at an inflection point. Electricity used to come largely from coal. Now one of the largest sources of electricity is gas. However, that is shifting really, really quickly. We're getting, as a country, and certainly, if you look at the global picture, we're getting more and more of our electricity from solar and wind, and the prices of those renewable energy sources are getting cheaper. Will New York City, New York state get most of its electricity from gas and coal forever?

No, probably not, and we are at that inflection point now. The question of whether we should hook up everything to electricity is a really good one. The electricity grid must be made more resilient for the extreme weather events that we face. It is not resilient in many parts of the country yet, and we've seen that. Yes your caller is absolutely right when the electricity goes out, if everything is hooked up to electricity, that's really tough. Again, we are at this inflection point where the grid must be made stronger and more resilient, where there really has to be much more electricity storage in the form of large batteries, and so I anticipate that we're going to see some changes in the next 10 years for sure in how we cook, in how we heat our homes, in how we get electricity, and in some ways that change is already mandated into law, and the change is pretty imperative if we're going to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, we are with Somini Sengupta, international climate reporter for The New York Times and lead writer for their Climate Forward newsletter in our climate story of the week here on the Brian Lehrer Show, on the topic of gas stoves and electric stoves. The immediate news hook is that in the New Republican Congress, there's already a bill introduced to ban the banning of gas stoves at the federal level. Some places like New York City are now banning it for new construction, and Governor Hochul said in her state of the state address last week that she's considering that on the state level for New York.

Some other states, however, in some more Republican areas have been going the other way and passing these statewide ban on bans of gas stoves at the local, municipal level, so some states are saying, no cities, you can't even do this on your own, and this bill in Congress, wait, let's see if I can find this again, is called the Stove Act. Why is it called the Stove Act? Stove is an acronym in this case for stop trying to obsessively vilify energy, so we're talking about this in the climate context with Somini. Let's take another call. Brian in Cold Spring. You're on WNYC. Hi, Brian.

Brian: Hi there. My question is, is there a distinguishing between different types of gas. I live in a more rural area where we have a propane tank in the back that's filled up by a local energy company different from the city where it's mainline from the central gas company. Is that propane as well? If not, is propane better for the environment in health, or are they one and the same?

Brian Lehrer: Do you know, Somini?

Somini Sengupta: I have been asked that question and it is something that I need to look up, and I need to understand better. Propane is the main ingredient in LPG, and yes, it is used widely in rural areas, so I don't know the answer to that question. It's a really good one. One thing to keep in mind is that the gas industry doesn't like gas bans and is threatened by this pivot to electrification.

My colleague, Hiroko Tabuchi, wrote last week a really interesting story about the propane industry recruiting celebrities to do anti-electrification messaging on television and on social media and the American Gas Association, a lobby group, they've been pretty instrumental in messaging against these electrification bills, so it's worth keeping that in mind. There are legacy industries that are threatened by these electrification efforts state by state.

Brian Lehrer: Have you seen yet what celebrities have signed up to do these anti-electrification ads?

Somini Sengupta: I think I'm not watching the right TV or YouTube videos, but Hiroko story, which I invite your audience to look up noted someone named Matt Blashaw who is a popular figure in home DIY home makeover shows.

Brian Lehrer: Very interesting, and what you were just laying out, including the celebrity spots against electrification, is old-fashioned politics. You're having an industry that's trying to preserve its place in the market against regulation. That's old-fashioned politics, but you also wrote in your Climate Forward newsletter on this whole question of gas stoves versus electrification laws is weirdly becoming part of the US culture wars. Why do you say culture wars?

Somini Sengupta: Well, because it's becoming part of the red-blue divide, as you rightly pointed out. Republicans have proposed this federal legislation. I don't know, whether it will go very far. The state ban on bans that you've referred to, those are all in Republican-controlled states, and the gas industry, as we were talking about before, has had its fingerprints on a variety of efforts to challenge electrification over the years.

Journalists have written about it. I cited a piece that Rebecca Lieber, a climate journalist, wrote some years ago, so it has also become a talking point for Republican lawmakers recently, so right after the consumer Product Safety Commission suggested that it would be studying the health risks of gas, Republican lawmakers claimed, which was inaccurate, that the Biden administration was proposing to pull gas stoves from people's homes. There are no such plans, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission went on Twitter to make clear and issued a statement making clear there were no such plans to do so.

Brian Lehrer: Some of the tweets that are coming in on either side of this, listener writes to what you were just saying, "this is not about stoves, but the Own the libs vibe is just enormous." Someone else rights, "the Republicans Stove Act against being against gas stoves to hell with the health of people in the planet. We can't give up on profit."

On the other hand, somebody writes, "what about when there's no electricity? Now at least we could use gas stove if there's loss of electricity" and someone else writes, "starts with PFFF, a debate between a properly adjusted gas cook up and induction systems is nothing but virtue signaling." We'll take that from those various tweeters and one more call. Bill in Beacon, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bill.

Bill: Hi, thank you, Brian. I'm part of Beacon Climate Action now, and we have been pushing for a guest, no new gas hookups bill in the city council and they've already written the bill and they're considering it now. I wanted to say we're doing what we can locally. People say, well, aren't the leaks in all along all the way down the gas lines more important?

Well, if we can eliminate or lower the demand side, then there will be fewer leaks and this federal government who regulates the power lines and the gas lines and all that stuff. We can't do that. We're doing what we can and the other, I had a question for you, early on, Somini said they're not going to be taking away gas stoves, and you said that some cities are, and I'm just interested what information you had that made you say that.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, I think we clarified that at the time, I was referring to New York City, for example, which has banned all new gas stove hookups in future construction.

Bill: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: They're not taking them away from anybody who currently has them.

Bill: Yes, that's what we're trying to do here.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, there's some people who want to do that, so that may yet enter into the policy conversation mandatory retrofitting, but that's not in the law to be clear.

Bill: It's not going to happen, but the big thing is we have to do something about climate change. People say, oh, there's problems with the electric supply and blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, what's your solution to climate change? All right.

Brian Lehrer: Right.

Bill: Thank you so much, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Bill. Somini, last word.

Somini Sengupta: I think his point about lowering demand was a really important one. As we are speaking, the countries of the European Union have been trying to lower their gas demand for the obvious reason that they were getting a lot of their gas from Russia. They're trying to really wean themselves off of Russian gas, and they have very quickly lowered their demand for gas for heating. It's been helped by a relatively mild winter. Look, they've done a bunch of other things. Many European countries are switching very quickly to electric heat pumps. There's a lot of energy efficiency efforts taking place.

That is something that, at least for New York City, which I know best because I've lived here for a long time, that is something that many of our buildings is really going to have to consider because many of our buildings are old, they're leaky, they don't have great windows. How we help people with energy efficiency improvements is going to be a really big deal and really important, I think, for just ordinary residents of the city.

Brian Lehrer: That's our Climate story of the week with Somini Sengupta, international climate reporter for The New York Times and lead writer for their Climate Forward newsletter. Her latest newsletter titled About that Gas stove. Somini, we always appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Somini Sengupta: Thank you, Brian.

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