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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the EcoNews Report, I'm your host this week Tom Wheeler, executive director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center, I'm joined by some of my favorite folks. Alicia Hamann, Friends of the River. Hey, Alicia. And we have Colin Fiske, director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. And we're joined by Laura Dean of Environment California -- state director of Environment California. Hey, Laura.

And we are talking about the conservative freak-out over gas stoves -- big government is gonna come in jack-booted thugs and rip out your gas stove and make you eat cold mush forever, which is why I learned recently on Fox News. So we're gonna talk about what's actually going on with gas stoves in the state of California at the nationwide level and attempts to regulate the harmful pollutants both to our climate, to our personal health that come from gas stoves. So Laura, this is something that Environment California has been working hard on the fight to improve home air quality and save our climate for our our Children and our Children's Children. Do you want to give a primer on like how we got to this conversation about gas stoves and maybe like the origins of conservative freak-out?

LAURA DEEHAN:

Sure be happy to, it's interesting because it was only a year or two ago that Environment California and we work with groups around the country at Environment America as well as our close partners at perks like kelp ERG and the other state perks. We were talking about how the continued use of fossil fuels in our homes is really pretty absurd when you think about it, when you think about like what will the world be like 100 years from now? I think this is one of those weird things that will look back on and be like, what were we doing? What were we thinking? Burning gas inside our home? That was a really dangerous move. Obviously for the climate concerns using methane, which is one of the most potent greenhouse gasses in our homes and piping it in all around our state in our country as well as for the health impacts. So it feels kind of similar to exposure to secondhand smoke in some way where back when we started to learn that secondhand smoke exposure is really dangerous. It was kind of controversial to think about banning cigarette smoke or smoking in in restaurants or in businesses. But then once there was more public awareness it became more more acceptable. So we actually started working with some other coalition partners, Energy Innovation and climate imperative, Rocky Mountain Institute and started to think about what can we do to start to raise awareness about just the sheer absurdity of this continued practice. There's been more research done in recent years about the health impacts and so we wanted to do more to raise awareness to shine a light on that. Just in december, we held a webinar, it was Environment America per co hosted webinar like how to do safe cooking for the holidays and this was just something we invited the public too and some members of the media and we actually invited the commissioner from the Consumer Product Safety Commission CPSC commissioner Trumpy who is now an infamous name a wee bit. And then in the media, he was a guest speaker. We had an expert talk about the health threats and we learned more about, we actually had a pro chef demonstrate on an induction stove how you can cook for the holidays really well without using gas. And then as part of that, we had a commissioner talk about what the CPSC is considering doing. He said, we're gonna be opening up a rulemaking around the safety of gas stoves and we're considering action to raise further awareness about these, these health risks. And then he said, which we were really stunned by honestly anything is on the table including banning gas stoves that is on the table, which we were really not quite ready for. Um, to be honest, as organizers were always thinking about, how do we get to this future world right, where we don't use fossil fuels, but we know the public isn't thinking about gas stoves as being a dangerous fossil fuel in their whole, they're not thinking about it that way yet. And so we've got to start where people are at right? We've got to start where the public is. We've got to move people along step by step to start to connect the dots. We don't really think the public is quite ready for a ban on gasto outright. Um, and so that isn't something that we've even been advocating for in, in in any real way, but we do think that getting more awareness about the health impacts would help us build the case with the public when more hearts over to this idea that that might be a really important move when more minds over that this is an essential step from that public education perspective. We think raising awareness about the health threats is really important.

WHEELER:

Let's go into those health impacts. Right? So this is combustion, this is combustion of a fossil fuel. As you say, it's mostly methane in natural gas, natural gas being a term invented by the fossil fuel industry to make this noxious gas that we, we light on fire seem like cute and quaint and and like not as threatening, but this is methane, this is this is the climate pollutant that is a super climate force er because it is just so powerful and traps so much heat. This is the same stuff that, that we're bringing inside our homes. What what happens when we, when we moved to light our stoves, what is being admitted into our homes that might impact our health?

DEEHAN:

Yeah, one of the most dangerous gasses that comes out is Benzene, which is, is one of the direct links to health threats, like the, one of the most shocking studies that just came out a couple of weeks ago, was that around the country, one in eight cases of asthma is directly caused by burning of gas in the whole having a gas stove lit and in California, it's even higher. We have just such a high proportion of gas stoves compared to other parts of the country. That that is actually one in five cases of asthma in California is now directly linked to gas stoves, which is just shockingly high. My son has asthma, my, my older son, and I had no idea when he was growing up that, you know, I was inadvertently exposing him to dangerous chemical, these gasses that are linked to respiratory conditions like asthma and I could have been making the situation worse for him when I was cooking our dinner at home

HAMANN:

to reflect on that for a moment, I did a little bit of research leading up to this radio show Episode. And I was really struck by actually how old some of the research is. There's research from like, I'm looking at a study right now from 1992, that was 30 years ago. So why is it that that it takes so long for this kind of information to reach the public and become generally accepted fact.

DEEHAN:

Yeah, that's a great question, Alicia. Um not only has there been evidence for going back for even longer than 30 years, You know, for over 100 years. I think we've known that there can be health problems associated with it, but there's also been this active intentional campaign by the gas industry, by the fossil fuel industry, the gas stove makers to make us want these products and to kind of diminish the concern and the risks associated with it. We've all been subjected to marketing, whether it's the ads on television and cooking with gas or the ads in in our media, you know that that it's really been pushed on us and I think that has helped to push back and and undermine, you know, those concerns. And so to be honest, I think the reason it's coming up now is because there's been a concerted effort by groups to raise awareness and propagate, you know, the news about these threats. I think we were all kind of stunned when, you know, after trump kate said these things on that, on that webinar, he continued to actually say those things in the media in interviews like yeah, you know, these are really big concerns and a ban on gas stoves is on the table and I guess there's nothing like a ban to elicit strong reactions. And so I think that suddenly we've seen a lot more awareness now and a lot more people going, oh wait a minute, I didn't realize, you know, there was helping health impacts here and now that I further look into it, I'm actually really interested in in the alternatives and induction stoves and other electric cooking appliances.

WHEELER:

You've raised one of my, my favorite little anecdotes which is the popular american idiom. "Now we're cooking with gas" was was an invention of the fossil fuel industry. So like we we have internalized were so deeply internalized the marketing from, from the fossil fuel industry that now we just like we use it in our everyday speech and it is, it's in our subconscious now. So as I understand you now have an induction stove Laura, tell me about cooking on the induction stove. Okay, so one of the cool things I've heard about induction stoves is that they are radically powerful, especially in doing tasks like boiling water that you can cut the time it takes to boil a pot of water in half. So like if you really were want to get that pasta in your belly, induction stove will facilitate that carb loading as fast as possible.

DEEHAN:

That is exactly true in our house. Their favorite thing is often macaroni and cheese, unfortunately and they, when they want that, they really want it and it's great to be able to cook it within really, really fast or cooking oatmeal in the morning very quick.

WHEELER:

Yeah. And so the technology to is really cool and this is not like our, our parents generation of electric stoves right? This is not the coil that gets red hot and you don't want to put your hand on it. It's not like the sheet of glass that has like a coil underneath it, that gets real hot and you don't want to put your hand on it, an induction stove instead of heating something that then your pot sits on, it heats your pot itself, your, your pot becomes kind of the boiler in the boiler, the range top in some and that's super, that's super cool and need. And the ability and the precision that you can have with induction stoves has now led to a whole mess of professional chefs. Some of the fanciest restaurants in the world now are moving to induction stove cook tops. So, you know, if you were to go to Noma in Copenhagen, which is now closing, you would see them using the induction stove cook tops. We have Alison roman one, the most famous cookbook authors in the United States, she swears by her induction stove. And I think that this is a really important part of getting the social acceptance of this sort of technology is to realize that we're not giving up anything right. We're not going to accept this lesser thing that's going to make our lives more irritating. We are getting a very good product. We were getting something that performs extremely well in the task that it has to do, there might be some forms of cooking that are more difficult with this. I've heard that using a walk that having the concentrated heat source at the bottom of the walk that gas stove can produce, maybe that can't be replicated well on induction stove yet. But for our general everyday cooking needs, induction stoves perform as good or better than gas stoves. And we have this like classist thing against electric stoves in our country where it's like a sim poverty and you know, you've made it when you have that like viking range with the gas stove. So

HAMANN:

I've gotta however, to throw up. So using an induction stove, that's the right choice for our families for our personal health. But is it a climate solution yet? If our sources of electricity are still largely based in fossil fuels, that's a good question. Is it a good climate solution, Is there, is there a lot more that needs to be done for it to serve that purpose as well?

DEEHAN:

Yeah, that's a great question. We know that it's a lot cleaner right now in California to use induction or to use an electric cooktop. One thing I'll say tom is that although induction is awesome, the new electric stuffs are, you know, they are not induction that don't use magnets that are working the old fashioned way. There are also a lot better than they used to be. So folks shouldn't Yeah, there's also a lot more affordable. So one thing about induction is, it's a little pricey still. So we've got some work to do to bring down those costs. But yeah, to your point Alicia, I think right now California gets a third of our power, our electricity from renewable sources. And because you don't have the emissions at the point where you're using the stove, it is definitely cleaner to use an electric stove over or an induction stove today. And as we move swiftly towards a 100% renewable future, right, California is already committed to 100% renewable power by 2045. We've got to get to 90% renewables by 2035 by law. We're really hoping we can get there much faster because as the price of renewables go down, as we see incentives like the inflation reduction act paying off, we're, you know, we're really seeing momentum build and renewables can happen much more, much more quickly. And of course that there's more work to be done there. So we've got Environment California, we've got a really ambitious legislative agenda this year to really help to accelerate our path to get there. But but I would, I would say one key way that we're going to be able to tackle the climate crisis is to decarbonization, to stop being reliant on carbon In the home. So getting electric or induction cook tops as well as electrifying the rest of our home. The way we heat our home, the way we heat our water, that those are going to make a huge difference in allowing us to get to that 100% renewable energy future economy wide

COLIN FISKE:

To build on that a little bit. The fossil fuel industry has long been well aware that gas stoves are kind of the way to, to people's hearts when it comes to gas in their homes. In general, people have lots of emotional attachments to cooking for for obvious reasons. And so when you think of it that way, you know, most people don't have a strong emotional attachment to their gas water heater or their gas furnace or whatever gas stoves have been used in this way to justify and promote hooking up buildings to gas everywhere and then use for all these other uses, which actually use a lot more fossil fuel. And so I think breaking up with this false romance with the gas stove that's been promoted by the industry is an important step towards decarbonization buildings more generally.

WHEELER:

More EcoNews Report in just one moment. We're talking to Laura deon of Environment California about their work to electrify the state using clean renewable energy. I want to talk about how we move to this all electric future because this is something that's gonna be important for our climate, especially when it comes to gas stove. It's gonna be important for our health Laura you and I are going through the same experience right now, my wife and I are trying to electrify our house. We have a 1930 for craftsman in Eureka and we've been working on installing solar, we have a heat pump. The gas stove is kind of the next to go, it's costly, it's a lot of work to go back and retrofit a house. And this is one of the things about allowing new gas infrastructure that really gets to me is that when we put in the house today that has gas piped in and that relies on gas furnace and gas stove and whatever else it's so dang difficult in the future to then go back and fix that house to make it all electric. And so if there is some truth to the conservative freak out that we're coming for the gas stoves, we are environmentalists are attempting to force force, maybe I shouldn't use that word. We're attempting to now use horse encourage forcefully all electric development for for new buildings. Here's something that's going on in Humboldt County We had a large subdivision that was going to go and fill in some area of forest near Eureka. The coalition for responsible transportation priorities calling and an epic noticed that in the environmental analysis for the project, they anticipated that was going to create a significant impact because of new greenhouse gas emissions. So we said, hey, there's this reasonable mitigation measure that you can use do all electric development. So we're, we're trying to, to use what means we can to move us forward into this all electric future. We also have jurisdictions across the state of California, I think over 70 now that have some sort of what are called the reach code because we are reaching further than what our state building demands. Our state building code demands to require all electric, new development, I guess I don't have a question there other than it's, it's, it's coming, this is, this is what we're trying to do, we are trying to make all electric homes, but it's going to provide a, a cleaner home for our kids and and for us and it's ultimately going to probably be a cheaper home because running my, my super efficient heat pump costs way less Now, the gas prices have radically sword than if I were to run my gas furnace that I replaced. Yeah, Colin<./span>

FISKE:

that really gets at a broader principle for climate action, which is, we have to do a whole lot of things, but kind of the first thing we have to stop, We have to stop digging the hole deeper. And so, you know, when it comes to new development, that's kind of low hanging fruit in terms of electrification, but it also of course, being a transportation advocate, it brings to mind for me all the other aspects of, of development, it's like we need to stop building landscapes that are designed for these high energy fossil fuel using forms of transportation. We need to really rethink the way that we are, are doing new things and that's really, although it seems hard, is much easier than than redesigning the systems we already have.

WHEELER:

So for folks like us Laura who are trying to electrify our homes, I understand that there are a ton of incentives now available. Environment California has been trying to collect all of these ways to help finance your movement, you direct us to resources. If someone is interested in doing this in their own home, what what sort of what sort of perks are available to homeowners and where can they find those?

DEEHAN:

Yeah, so, great question. There is a lot of great new resources. The federal government made the biggest investment that we ever have with the inflation reduction act and also with the bipartisan infrastructure bill. There's a lot of new infrastructure getting built to support our transition to this electric, renewable future. And and so we put together a resource is called a clean energy homes toolkit, which we're actually updating all the time as new resources come online as new. You know, there's new programs that are still getting set up as a result of the inflation reduction act. And so this is kind of a living toolkit, folks can go to our website Environment California dot org and you can look for the clean energy homes toolkit there under resources. And then we also just held a webinar for interested folks called you have the power where we talked about all of the ways that you can take advantage of the new tax credits, tax incentive programs. Um everything from how to go solar and get solar on your rooftop, which if you're in California, you want to do fast before the net energy metering program changes on april 16th. So if you can get your, your purchase finalized before april 16th, you should be in the clear and be able to stay on them two point Oh, unfortunately after that day it's gonna be more expensive to go solar. But we, we also have information, there's like videos, Q and A. And resources from a bunch of experts on how to get an electric car, how to do the electrification work in your home and and weatherizing as well. So if folks are interested, you can check that out and right now when we're seeing the price, like people's utility bills are soaring mostly because of the gas prices that were just out of control of the last couple of months, which is the real, it's another real motivation for people. I think instead of being subject to the volatility of fossil fuel pricing, whether it's with your, your car, with the price of gasoline, which is spiking left and right or with your, your home power. You know, the, the gas prices are really volatile right now, electricity is a lot, it's a lot more affordable to have these efficient products, but then it's also more stable, especially as as we go renewable.

ALICIA HAMANN:

Speaking of affordability, Laura, you made this really wonderful analogy earlier about how on an individual level in our own homes, we are investing in our future, sometimes going into debt to have a safer living environment to protect our Children and and to really prepare to have a smoother future for ourselves. But we're not seeing that kind of thought at the state level, It's always talking about balancing budgets and really, you know, maybe it's actually a time for us to be spending more right now so that we have a future to be considering. Would you expand on that a little bit?

DEEHAN:

Yeah, Yeah, happy to, you know, it's it's interesting because we all celebrated last year when Governor Newsom kind of followed the lead of the federal government right in the heels of the passage of the inflation reduction act, California put in place the what he called the Climate Committee commitment, which was really to invest in climate at an unprecedented scale in the state of California. It was a five year budget of $54 billion and just january 10th. So less than a month ago. Unfortunately, Governor Newsom proposed a revised budget which cut that by $6 billion in this year, that's basically a 50% cut to this year's climate budget. It's a really big cut to this so called commitment. And when you hear the governor and folks that his agency talk about this, they'll explain that well, it's a really big investment, still some a bigger investment than anyone else is making, which is true, but but the reality is they'll say we wanna do what people do at, we need to balance our budget right. We need to not spend more than we're making. But the reality is right now, we're asking Californians to to not just balance their budget when it comes to tackling climate change and and protecting ourselves and building resilience. Right? People are are dealing still with the fallout from these intense storms and they're having to spend their rainy day fund to make sure they're prepared for the next intense storm or extreme weather event. They're also having to make the decision to protect their family from the threats of pollution in the home by updating their stoves and like in my house we're taking on debt to do that because we think it's worth it for the future of our kids life, that they not get exposed to this pollution right now. And honestly, we know it's gonna get all so much more expensive if we wait right. Climate inaction is going to be the most costly choice. And so we've really been challenging the Governor's, you know, the administration and the legislature to put things in perspective here and to really take the lead of so many of us who are making the decision to invest in our future by going electric by doing these up. We want this call to action right to take advantage of all these great incentives to inspire more and more people to make their home to, you know, use their power and make their home as clean as possible and we really need our state leaders to lead by example and do that same thing. So there's talk now about a new climate bond and what's going to go in that climate bond, it might include infrastructure for electric charging as well as resilience investments. But what are some of the other solutions, long term solutions to help us really like we know this transition is going to cost a lot and so we've got to but the sooner we do it, the cheaper it's going to be. And so let's think big and and continue and definitely not like weaken our commitment right now by cutting these critical funds.

WHEELER:

I just want to point out that while there are cuts across virtually all of the state budget, the cuts to our climate budget are the the largest of any category. So we are disproportionately cutting the climate budget. I don't think that's very cool. So I hope folks reach out to state Senator McGuire Assembly member, would Governor Newsom and let their feelings be known that we really need to invest in climate action now, both. So it's cheaper for us in the future and for our ability to not die in the climate wars, which is currently my retirement plan. So we are moving forward on electrification. One other thing I want to point out here locally is that we have some expensive electricity here on the north coast and there's a big reason why and that's fossil fuels. Most of our power in Humboldt County is coming from the Humboldt Bay generating station. Right, so this is our massive natural gas power plant. While it's efficient ish for a natural gas power plant, it's still burning really expensive fossil fuels prices that have just skyrocket because of the war in Ukraine and we have international volatility on the fossil fuel markets and blah blah blah. Right. So luckily there's a solution for this environment, California has been a wonderful champ Of offshore wind and we have over two gigawatts of potential offshore wind coming online in the next 10, 15 years off of Humble County's coast Laura, do you want to close briefly by just what your vision is at Environment California for the future of offshore wind as part of our kind of grand portfolio renewables.

DEEHAN:

Yeah, sure. So one thing that is an incredible resource that California has access to is really powerful winds that blow off our coast, The scientists at the Department of Energy have analyzed it and found that we could more than meet all of our energy needs just from offshore wind, even in a future where all of our transportation and all of our homes are fully electric, got a lot of electricity demand that could actually all be met with offshore wind. Obviously we want to first take advantage of solar power and rooftop solar power in particular, all the existing rooftops to catch the sun. We already as a state have set a goal of 25 gigawatts of power just from offshore wind. So that's about half of the electricity we use at the very peak demand is about 25 gigawatts. So it's a lot of power that the state has a, has a goal to make a plan to, to reach that by 2045 they want to get five gigawatts by 2030. Yeah, it's gonna be, it's a really exciting time because we've not got a single bit of offshore wind power in our state yet. And other parts of the world and other states are actually way ahead of California on this. And so my home country Scotland is one of the leaders and it's one of the reasons that they're 100% powered by clean energy is because of their tremendous offshore wind operations that they have going. And so we want to learn from these other countries, we want to learn from the East Coast and where they've got offshore wind also operational to figure out how do we do it the best possible way, you know, in a way that both gets us that incredible clean energy resource in a way that really minimizes the disruption to our ocean wildlife and marine habitat and also in a way that really helps to support the communities that are going to be, especially places like Humboldt that are right where we've got some of the best offshore wind blowing. There's a lot of discussion happening right now about how we can like learn from these other places, um to ensure that as we create, we birth this brand new industry in our state that we do it the right way to support communities and to protect the environment as we go.

WHEELER:

Well, Laura, it's always a pleasure to talk to you, Laura Dehann, state Director of Environment California, Thank you so much for joining the EcoNews Report.

DEEHAN:

Thank you so much for having me, Tom. Such a pleasure to be here.

WHEELER:

Pleasure to have you, and join us again on this timing channel next week for more environmental news from the north coast of California.