> A ban on gas stoves would only affect rich people for the most part.

And professional kitchens.

For the record I agree with phasing them out but I can see restaurant chefs fighting hard against it.

Mostly the old guard who doesn't want to adapt to induction ovens and Döner Kebab shops where there really is no replacement for a proper gas grill.

At least here in Europe, many restaurants are switching because the writing is on the wall that natural gas will get very expensive very soon.

So soon it that became expensive since the last year or so

Sure, but all actual bans in the US so far have made exceptions for commercial kitchens.

Indication stoves are claimed to be as good as gas. However the cheapest induction stove in the US is 3x the price of the cheapest gas or electric. And if you go stove shopping you with find lots of options for gas or regular electric, but often only one induction model - if you want some combination of features and are willing to pay - you often still can't get it with induction. (dual ovens, number of burners, burner configuration, non-standard widths - there are lots of options that are at least interesting to someone who is cooking)

Respectfully - all of these "issues" get solved when you go from ~1%->100% market share.

100x increases in manufacturing volumes will do amazing things for final cost. Expanded market share to 100% will lead to every features imaginable being offered to the market.

Ending gas stoves, and gas distribution in general, is a huge win. Just as phasing out incandescent light bulbs was a huge win. Each "infrastructure grid" that we run to every building (Electricity, Water/Sewer, Roads, IT, natural gas) is overwhelmingly expensive to build and maintain. And if you don't maintain it - you blow up San Bruno[1]. It would be great to delete one!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion

The problem is we are not at a high market share (in the US), and it will be a while before they gain.

I hate my current stove, but no way am I paying the cost for a new one. I also have vacations and other things I want. (As a programmer my income is well above average, so I have to assume the costs are only more prohibitive for most people)

Agreed. I was shocked at the cost of an induction stove top in the US when I looked recently. £350 buys you a great induction stove top in the UK (I paid less for a neff nN50 just before COVID). $1000 only just buys you an entry level one on the US.

Won't happen but a bit of communism would help. Government specs and purchases induction stoves and sends a trucks around and replaces all the crap electric stoves one neighborhood at a time. Basic idea better to just do it as a coordinated project than piecemeal.

Other thought about decommissioning gas lines. When doing infrastructure projects that require digging moving gas utilities is a big big hassle and expense. Getting rid of natural gas lines would make that stuff easier.

I claim that ordinary electric coil stoves are as good as gas for nearly every non-commercial use case, and the moderate popularity of gas stoves was almost entirely manufactured by the gas industry. I understand that some things are harder, like using a wok, but there are easy workarounds, and most Americans never try to do these things anyway.

Electric stoves are also strictly better at a lot of things - very high heat, very low heat, cleaning, repairing, not polluting the air, etc.

And then the step up to induction is even more so a no brainer. That way, just the benefits of gas (fast hot, fast cool) are added on top of electric. Without the cleaning hassles.

People act like home cooks are too braindead to remove a pan from a hot coil for 45 seconds while it cools down so the food doesn't burn. As though this is a good reason to burn fossil fuels and pollute your home.

Induction stoves are really not expensive,fast and easier to clean. Also the pans are easier to clean (less chance of burnt grease inside and outside). The shift from gas to electric is a tiny step compared to combustion to EV. I guess it is more a hard-to-shift cultural thing?

This seems pretty reasonable: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/blackstad-induction-cooktop-bla...

When it comes to cooking, non-induction electric stoves are a downgrade from gas stoves, even if they're the same price. Induction stoves are at least an upgrade in some respects, but a downgrade in terms of cookware compatibility. Phasing out gas stoves might be the future, but I wouldn't describe it as something that only affects rich people.

I disagree. For all common tasks (and most uncommon tasks) that Americans do with a stove, non-induction electric stoves are as good or better than gas.

I’ve cooked on both and prefer gas. For pots with curvature (woks), induction doesn’t work well. Induction is nice for boiling water/soups, but frying is better with gas. Gas is also more user friendly as a broiler in the oven for toasting than a slow to heat electric element.

gas is also incredibly wasteful. the efficiency of a resistive element stove is in the 80-90% range while for gas, it is in the 20s if you are lucky. most of the heat in a gas stove is lost to the environment.

The “better” you report is just perception. there is zero evidence or measurements to back that up.

Errr, assuming that your electricity comes from a combustion source and a simple cycle power plant, at _best_ the work derived from the heat is about 35%. You need to account for that in your 80-90% calculation. (That is, .9 * .35 = .315 using the upper range of your guesstimate.)

In other words, the waste heat has already been lost to the environment at the power generation source in that case.

As always "it depends"... (In this case on the power generation mix in your local grid)

The specific mix depends on the local grid, but nobody in the US gets electricity entirely from combustion, unless you're in like an Alaskan village that only has a generator.

I agree there are a couple niche cases like woks, but very few Americans ever use them, and if you do there are easy workarounds like electric woks. Electric ovens are typically better for broiling (https://www.consumerreports.org/appliances/ranges/gas-or-ele..., https://www.consumerreports.org/ranges/how-to-get-the-most-f...). Why do you think frying is better with gas?

Obviously some good gas stoves will still be better than bad electric ones, so I'm not discounting your individual experience, but I don't think your experience generalizes well.

The only thing gas has any claim of being better at is woks. Or anything else that really must have all that extra heat blasting up the sides of the pan. In every other way induction just kicks the crap out of gas. Far more powerful, faster to change heat settings, more precise. I grew up using OG electric coil stoves, had gas for the next 20 years, and induction for the last year. I could never go back to gas. Electric coil at least has the upside of being stupidly hot when you want. The high end temperature for gas isn't great.

This is total nonsense. I used to believe it as someone who only grew up with gas. Now, I've worked as a professional cook and lived in a variety of places with a variety of electric stoves at different price points. Electric is absolutely just as good as gas if you are a competent cook. It makes no difference whatsoever what the source of heat is on my stove anymore.

As a non-chef this has always been my suspicion, so I'll happily support you. I'm sure the immediacy of the temperature change matters to a degree (zing!) but how hard is it to wait a few seconds?

Its not a few seconds. The difference between high and low heat can easily exceed 1-1.5 minutes for gas vs typical electric most people have.

This makes cooking very difficult. When you turn down the knob from high to low, the element continues to cook your food at high to medium heat for another minute. This can burn or overcook your food. The converse of turning the knob from low to high is less bad, but can still be quite problematic.

You can easily anticipate this and turn down the nob early. When you inevitably fail to anticipate it, just remove the pan/pot from the stove for that time period. This is not rocket science. I get headaches from the gas fumes while cooking and I regret making the change every day. Yes I have a powerful vent hood. It is not enough for me personally.

Perhaps you are a better cook than I am. I look at physical signs like color changes, bubbling, texture changes etc, to move on to the next step. I can't always anticipate these changes ahead of time, and if I make a mistake in the anticipation, then getting back to the right temperature can easily add a few minutes to the cooking and potentially cause harm to the taste.

Of course, there are hacks like physically removing the pot that work, but it is added complexity on top of gas stoves.

The above obviously does not mean the gas stoves are objectively better - it only establishes that on one critical dimension gas is better than electric.

> the element continues to cook your food at high to medium heat for another minute

To be fair, so does the cookware. (Probably more so considering the lack of mass in a heating element.)

I have no professional experience, but I've used gas, coil top, glass top induction, and glass top non-induction. Of those four types induction is by far my favorite, but having to replace half of our pots and pans was annoying.

I would not be surprised if professional electric stoves are better, but the consumer experience is lacking. Coil top stoves often heat unevenly. The non-induction glass top experience is overall not great, with them seemingly being a downgrade from coil tops in all aspects other than cleaning and aesthetics.

If they're so bad, then why do so many people have them, and seem to be able to cook good food on them?

I appreciate that there are better stoves out there that might make certain things easier but the stove is not the thing that's holding back my cooking.

> ... downgrade in terms of cookware compatibility.

Induction plate adapters exist [1] - I haven't used one specifically for that purpose, but have used a diffuser plate which works on a similar principle.

The adapters are around AUD $20-50 which sounds like a cheap way to to start migrating your cookware collection to ferro bases.

I gather they're not great -- somewhat inefficient, and will necessarily have a more torpid response to temperature changes on the induction cooktop, shouldn't be used at high-temperatures -- but they do mean you don't have to replace all your cookware instantly.

If someone needs high temp and doesn't have a suitable pan already, cast iron is ridiculously cheap.

[1] https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=induction+plate+adapter+conver...

Sounds like it would effect 1/3 of US households

Moving from gas stove to induction electric stove is trivial. Upgrading from water and space heater to heat pump is neither simple nor cheap.