Yes, Chefs, The Government Is Coming For Your Gas Stoves

You might have thought the fierce public backlash that developed earlier in January when news broke of a planned effort by the federal Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) to regulate and eventually ban the use of gas stoves in the home broke in the media would have nixed that idea for now. But if you thought that, you would be wrong.

Despite the non-denial denial issued by CPSC Chairman Alexander Hoen-Sarcic shortly after the story broke, the controversy continued to bubble to the surface over the past two weeks. Commissioner Richard Trumka, Jr., whose comments were the germination point of the whole thing, seemed to back off on the matter during an interview with the Washington Post last week, while maintaining his concerns about use of gas stoves in the home.

“When you learn upsetting new information about something you’ve been around for a long time — maybe your whole life — you can never predict people’s reactions,” he said. “And there is going to be justifiable anger, and sometimes it’s misdirected.”

Perhaps this will spell an end to a federal effort to ban gas stoves, but no one should think efforts to ban their use are a dead idea. Quite to the contrary, such ban efforts are alive and well in various states and cities around the country.

Let’s take a look at some of them:

On January 12, for example, New York Governor Kathy Hochul reiterated her support for a ban on putting gas stoves in new home construction by 2025, and in larger buildings by 2028. Hocul’s Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Basil Seggos tried to reassure the public more recently, saying “No one is going to come and take your gas stove.” But he went onto add “But as you begin making a transition, everyone will have to switch out appliances over the year…in the due course of swaps, what can you do to incentivize shifting from gas into something different, like an alternative induction stove or whatever is available at the time.”

So, New York isn’t implementing an immediate ban on gas stoves, but it sure sounds as if a gradual ban is part of the planning there.

E&E News reports that a proposal for a gas stove ban is also moving ahead in California, where regulators at the California Air Resources Board (CARB)considered plans this past week to ban the use of gas furnaces and stoves as part of efforts to meet EPA ozone standards in Los Angeles, Ventura County and the San Joaquin Valley.

Other local governments in California are in the process of considering similar bans as part of their ozone planning efforts. In 2019, Berkeley became the first city in the U.S. to ban natural gas hookups in new residences as part of its plans to cut carbon emissions. CARB has been active in the anti-gas appliance campaign as well, approving a measure last September that would ban the sale of all new gas water heaters and furnaces by 2030.

But the Pacific and Atlantic coasts are not the only fertile ground for efforts to ban gas stoves – such bans are also progressing in America’s heartland. In Colorado, for example, officials in both Denver and Boulder are advancing bans.

On January 14, the Denver Post reported that city councilman Jolon Clark recently moved to revive a proposal that would phase out and ultimately ban the installation of gas stoves and other gas appliances in new homes. “We’re right at that tipping point where this makes a lot of sense,” Clark said.

Ironically, the Post’s report references the same MDPI study used by Mr. Trumka to justify his pursuit of a federal ban, saying that the study “explained that the appliances can be blamed for about 12.7% of childhood asthma cases across the country.” Yet, a spokesperson for the Rocky Mountain Institute, which commissioned the study, recently admitted the report “does not assume or estimate a causal relationship” between childhood asthma and natural gas stoves.

Just last week, NPR for Northern Colorado reported that city officials in Boulder will consider implementing a ban on gas stoves this year, again on the unproven claim that the stoves help contribute to childhood asthma. This claim remains so unproven that it is not included in the American Lung Association’s listed known causes of childhood asthma.

The ALA does, however, include obesity and smoking by parents in the home as major causes of the childhood affliction. Yet, none of these and other local and state officials who are going after your gas stoves are making similar efforts to ban smoking in the home. Gas stoves are, at the end of the day, just an appliance, after all, while smoking is an addiction. Far easier for policymakers to move to gradually ban the tool via incremental regulatory actions over a sustained period of time than to deny parents access to the focus of their addiction.

Bottom Line: Cooking shows and contests are ubiquitous features on Americans’ television lineups these days. On pretty much every one of them, featured chefs like Gordon Ramsay, Rachel Ray, Giada de Laurentiis and Jose Andres can be seen cooking with gas.

There are no induction stoves featured on Top Chef; no all-electric kitchens to be found on Hell’s Kitchen. This is no accident or coincidence: Gas stoves are simply considered to be the most superior tools of the trade.

But if America’s city councils, state air quality boards and federal regulators have their way, that will all change in the years to come. It’s the safest bet in the world.