Behavior Change for Climate Change, Post #3: Reduce Emissions in Your Kitchen

In this series of climate-focused posts, we’ll dig a little deeper into how behavior change—as both eaters and consumers—can help move the needle when adapting to a changing climate.

Adapting to climate change means making behavioral change in every segment of our lives—from how we heat and cool our homes, to how we spend our free time, to our level of engagement with government on behalf of climate-friendly policies. For households looking to reduce their emissions and shift their practices, an overall look at energy efficiency in the home (and the kitchen, specifically) is a great place to start. 

Many renewable energy advocates say that one way to reduce emissions at home is to switch your energy source. Mothers Out Front, a national climate action network based in Boston, partners with the Green Energy Consumers Alliance to enroll people in the Alliance’s green power program. When your household enrolls in the program, you enter a pool of consumers who support renewables; the program aggregates consumer purchasing power and pushes overall demand for renewable energy. 

Once you’ve formalized support for renewables, you can start making changes to the energy infrastructure of your home, such as improving insulation, installing solar panels, heat pumps for heating and cooling and a system to capture and reuse rainwater. Climate advocates encourage households to electrify their power sources in order to take advantage of power generated from wind, solar and water as these renewable energy supplies build capacity.

This means converting or replacing appliances that draw their power from non-renewable natural gas (of which methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is a main component), including the hot water heater, dryer, and of course, the stove. 

Of all the switches, the stove might be the toughest to embrace—a gas burner is responsive in a way that electric is not. It’s a satisfying way to cook, but it’s not the cleanest or most climate-friendly.

Two-thirds of the natural gas supply in the U.S. comes from hydraulic fracturing (aka “fracking”), which is energy-intensive to extract and known to pose risks to water quality. Further, gas burners can produce nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide, both pollutants that lower air quality in the home—which is compounded if your kitchen isn’t particularly well-vented. 

For green home advocates, the solution is replacing gas ranges with induction cooktops. This switch might take some adjustment, but induction—which transfers heat through electric currents between the burner and the pan—can be as quick (if not quicker) to get hot and just as responsive as gas. And since there are many portable induction burners on the market, it’s easy to test one out before fully replacing your gas range and oven. 

Transitioning your home and kitchen to a low-carbon space can be a long-term project, so take steps as your budget and bandwidth allow. Fortunately, there are more immediate changes you can make when it comes to assessing what you’re cooking and eating in your climate-friendly kitchen. More on that in the next post! 

Leigh’s climate-themed series will appear as online exclusives during the fall of 2019, culminating in an entire issue dedicated to the subject in February 2020. Sign up for our e-newsletters to be notified when each installment goes live.