I have been arguing for some time now that we’ve reached the point in human history where we should stop setting stuff on fire: coal, oil, biomass, or in this case the “natural gas” that’s found on cookstoves across the country. The most important reason is because all that combustion is cooking the planet—but a new study published this week reminded us all of another huge virtue. It found that 13% of childhood asthma in the country can be attributed to kids living in houses with gas stoves. That’s 650,000 kids—20 Fenway Parks worth of wheezing young people. “It’s like having car exhaust in a home,” Brady Seals, a co-author of the research, told the Washington Post. “And we know that children are some of the people spending the most time at home, along with the elderly.” This isn’t the first study to come up with similar findings. Earlier efforts found that children in households with gas stoves were 42% more likely to come down with asthma. And of course the effect is magnified in poorer households, which are smaller and less likely to be equipped with adequate ventilation. It would be cruel to report this news if there weren’t easy ways to fix the problem—after all smoking cigarettes is optional, but cooking dinner isn’t. Happily, we live at a moment when the problem is easily fixed. The magnetic induction cooktop, like the electric heat pump, is a miraculous piece of technology. It uses…magnets to heat up pots and pans and cook your food. (Don’t ask me how). The stove doesn’t get hot (see the picture above of the man sticking his hand next to the pan of boiling water) but the food does. And it’s cheap. This link will take you to an Amazon offer of an induction cooktop for less than $60. I used this model quite happily for years (as did the thousands of other reviewers) until we broke down and installed a full induction cooktop. You do need a pan made of an alloy that attracts magnets—I wager that if you take one off your fridge and try sticking it to your pots you’ll likely find a few. (Cast iron works, and stainless steel. Your good stuff—the All-Clad, the Le Crueset—should work). And it cooks just fine. If you want to boil water, it’s much faster than a cooktop. You can control the heat quite accurately; I like to use a wok, and it works for that. It works for everything. The natural gas industry hates this technology, just like they hate heat pumps; their entire business model is, ‘we dig stuff up and set it on fire.’ One of the classic pieces of recent environmental journalism came from Rebecca Leber in Mother Jones when she showed how the gas lobby was paying social media influencers to insist that somehow cooking over a blue flame produced better food. “#cookingwithgas makes food taste better,” says Camille, an LA-based foodie who poses artfully with her spatula, to her 16,700 followers. This is not true. What is true, as Leber reported, is the following: Shelly Miller, a University of Colorado, Boulder, environmental engineer who has studied indoor air quality for decades, explains that when a stove burns natural gas—just as when a car burns gasoline—that combustion reaction oxidizes molecules in the air to create nitrogen oxides, which can make us sick. “Cooking,” she says, “is the No. 1 way you’re polluting your home. It is causing respiratory and cardiovascular health problems; it can exacerbate flu and asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in children.”Some environmental problems are hard to solve. But this one shouldn’t be. All in all, living in a house with a gas range is a risk factor equivalent to living in a house with secondhand cigarette smoke!     https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/turn-off-the-gas?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email    

Floating offshore wind power is on an upward trajectory, according to a recent analysis from the London-based trade association RenewableUK. The capacity of the world’s planned floating offshore wind projects has more than doubled over the past year, going from 91 gigawatts to 185 gigawatts — enough to power about 62 million U.S. homes. Floating offshore wind refers to wind turbines installed on platforms attached to the ocean floor using flexible anchors or chains. By contrast, conventional offshore wind projects sit on fixed platforms that rest on the seabed — and so aren’t built in deep waters. Most of this capacity won’t be operational for years, but the data signals much-needed progress on wind power. A separate report published earlier this year said the wind sector in general — including both on and offshore projects — was falling far short of the 3,200 gigawatts needed by 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). For wind energy alone, we should be installing four times the current level of annual installations to stay on a net-zero pathway,” said Ben Backwell, CEO of the Global Wind Energy Council trade group, in a statement at the time. Meanwhile, a new effort launched ahead of this year’s United Nations climate negotiations in Egypt could accelerate growth. Members of the Global Offshore Wind Alliance, which include countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., businesses, and international organizations, have pledged to work together to bring installed offshore wind capacity to 380 gigawatts by 2030, an increase of more than 500 percent   

Rapid Green Energy Transition by 2050 Could Save the World at Least $12 Trillion. "There is a pervasive misconception that switching to clean, green energy will be painful, costly, and mean sacrifices for us all—but that's just wrong," said Oxford professor and study co-author Doyne Farmer.Peer-reviewed research released Tuesday by a team at the University of Oxford reveals that transitioning to 100% clean energy within the next three decades could save not only lives and the planet but also $12 trillion. "Accelerating the transition to renewable energy is now the best bet not just for the planet, but for energy costs too." The study from the Oxford Martin Program on the Post-Carbon Transition, published in the journal Joule, comes as scientists continue to warn about the climate and health impacts of fossil fuels, and governments party to the Paris agreement prepare for COP27, a November summit in Egypt. "There is a pervasive misconception that switching to clean, green energy will be painful, costly, and mean sacrifices for us all—but that's just wrong," Oxford professor and study co-author Doyne Farmer said in a statement. "Renewable costs have been trending down for decades." "They are already cheaper than fossil fuels in many situations, and our research shows that they will become cheaper than fossil fuels across almost all applications in the years to come. And if we accelerate the transition, they will become cheaper faster," he explained. Farmer also highlighted that currently, "the world is facing a simultaneous inflation crisis, national security crisis, and climate crisis, all caused by our dependence on high cost, insecure, polluting, fossil fuels with volatile prices." "This study shows that ambitious policies to dramatically accelerate the transition to a clean energy future as quickly as possible are not only urgently needed for climate reasons, but can save the world trillions in future energy costs, giving us a cleaner, cheaper, more energy secure future," he said.                                https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/09/13/rapid-green-energy-transition-2050-could-save-world-least-12-trillion?utm_source=daily_newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=daily_newsletter                          

 "There is no way to reach net zero without dramatic reductions in emissions from heavy industry, and G7 economies have both a responsibility and an opportunity to take a leadership role in driving that forward,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “Emissions from heavy industry are among the most stubborn, making it essential that countries with significant financial and technological resources use them to scale up practical solutions in a coordinated way. This new report sets out realistic and actionable steps for G7 members that can provide a catalyst for the global progress that is urgently needed.”                                                                              "To achieve our goal to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, we have to decarbonise our industries. This decade is key to set the tracks to climate neutrality. Especially in sectors where emissions are high but hard-to-abate like steel and cement, we have to fundamentally shift production methods,” said Robert Habeck, Germany’s Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. “The IEA report Achieving Net Zero Heavy Industry Sectors in G7 Members shows us pathways and advances our understanding of the tools and definitions we need. It brings us a big step further to jointly create an international economic and political environment that incentivises investments in green and low carbon production facilities. We want the G7 to be a pioneer in this process.” Heavy industry is responsible for more than 15% of coal use and about 10% of oil and gas use in G7 members. This makes the net zero transition in heavy industry an important pillar for reducing the reliance on fossil fuels in the G7 in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, many of the technologies for significantly reducing emissions from heavy industry are still at large prototype or demonstration stage...........https://www.iea.org/news/g7-members-can-lead-the-world-in-reducing-emissions-from-heavy-industry