For decades, "natural gas" has sold itself to families as the fastest, most-efficient way to cook. But now there's a battle for your kitchen stove, and a push to get you to embrace electric for your health and for the planet.
A coalition of chefs, doctors, climate scientists and real estate developers have joined forces to push back against the gas industry's marketing, with the aim of removing gas from kitchens worldwide.
Campaigners say in addition to heating the climate, gas stoves contribute to asthma and other health conditions.
And that coalition thinks that if they can rid kitchens of gas, they'll rid homes of the fossil fuel altogether.
The Global Cooksafe Coalition is being launched in Sydney today and announcing partnerships with developers Lendlease and GPT, who have agreed to stop putting any gas in new buildings by 2030 and to retrofit existing buildings by 2040.
"Our view is that the future is all electric, whether it's electric vehicles, whether it's cooking, whether it's space heating," said Davina Rooney, chief executive of the Green Building Council, and one of the founders of the Global Cooksafe Coalition.
According to a 2018 paper published in the Medical Journal of Australia, 12 per cent of the burden of childhood asthma in Australia is due to indoor gas stoves.
And a 2013 paper combining the results of 41 other studies found children living in a home with a gas stove had a 42 per cent increased risk of having recent asthma symptoms.
There is also evidence that the pollutants released by gas stoves can affect the brain and heart, and increase susceptibility to allergens, said Kate Charlesworth, a public health physician and member of the Climate Council.
