Professional chefs are all agog about municipal bans on natural gas for heating and cooking. Some are suing Berkeley, CA, claiming that the bans on flame will destroy much of the industry. It sounds like a lot of hot air [sic], even gaslighting to me. I want, therefore, to know how much of the protest has come from chefs themselves, and how much has been ginned up by the natural gas industry. Certainly some environmental groups have been raising that issue, as we will see below.
Let's start with the lawsuit, and then look at the expressed views of the pro-gas and pro-electric chefs and others, and the technology itself.
In July, Berkeley became the first city in the U.S. to ban natural gas pipes in new buildings as a means of achieving greenhouse gas reduction goals. More than a dozen other cities in California, including San Jose, have passed similar measures. Brookline, Mass., this week became the first city outside of California to join the municipal ban on natural gas.
"Many restaurants will be faced with the inability to make many of their products which require the use of specialized gas appliances to prepare, including for example flame-seared meats, charred vegetables, or the use of intense heat from a flame under a wok," the lawsuit said. "Indeed, restaurants specializing in ethnic foods so prized in the Bay Area will be unable to prepare many of their specialties without natural gas."
As Lauren Sommer of member station KQED reports:
"About 27% of Berkeley's greenhouse gas emissions come from natural gas. That's on par with the nation; buildings, through heating and cooking, use almost a third of the natural gas consumed in the U.S.
"Natural gas lines also leak one of the most potent climate pollutants, methane, directly into the atmosphere."