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Debates about “clean cooking” in the U. S. often boil down to the question of gas vs. electric stoves. The cultural cache of gas stoves and the shiny newness of electric technologies like induction stoves make for compelling drama, but the theater obscures a larger truth: clean cooking can happen with both gas and electricity.
What defines clean cooking? A good place to start would be the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA), a non-profit that works to improve health and air quality around the world with funding from the United Nations Foundation. The work of the CCA supports the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, particularly number 7, which deals with energy access. From the CCA website: “Switching to clean cooking – using modern stoves and fuels – transforms lives by improving health, protecting the climate and the environment, empowering women, and helping consumers save time and money.”
Among those modern fuels is propane, a low-carbon fuel already used for cooking, space heating, and water heating by an estimated 11 million US households (that number jumps to around 50 million when outdoor grilling is considered). Propane is cleaner than the US electric grid on average – its calculated carbon intensity is 79, compared with 130 for average US grid electricity. Significant advances in renewable propane have the potential to produce fuel with zero or negative carbon intensity.
The CCA works to increase the adoption of propane and electric methods for cooking in parts of the world where cooking with wood and other biomass is prevalent. Smoke from cooking with these sources is responsible for an estimated 4 million deaths worldwide each year.
A recent article published in Healio rightly points out that women are disproportionally affected by indoor air quality issues, in large part because they do more cooking on average. This is true in the U.S., but the disparity is magnified in places like sub-Saharan Africa, home to 40% of the 2.4 billion people who lack access to clean cooking worldwide. Among the article’s takeaways is the well-established assertion that proper ventilation during cooking can reduce health risks, no matter the energy source used.
In 2019, the CCA published a report on effective ways to scale up the use of propane (also called liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG) in developing economies, using an effort in Tanzania as a case study. The report detailed the challenges and successes associated with setting up propane markets and infrastructure and provided a range of recommendations for future efforts. The report’s conclusion is instructive: “No one solution alone meets Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 and ensures universal access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy services, including for cooking, by 2030. However, enabling access to LPG can significantly contribute to reaching SDG 7.”
Given this global context, it’s worth revisiting the gas vs. electric debate in this country. Most Americans are fortunate to have access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy for clean cooking. Whether it’s with gas or electricity, we should all be thankful for that.
