Which is the more climate-friendly option for heating and cooking: gas or electric? The answer depends on where you live.
Measurements of greenhouse gas emissions taken during the Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany, a large festival with a focus on food and drink, suggest that the event could reduce its annual carbon footprint by 87 per cent if it switched its gas-fired heaters, grills and ovens to electric. But for much of the world, the study indicates that natural gas is currently the more climate-friendly option because the proportion of renewable electricity isn鈥檛 yet high enough.
Natural gas consists mainly of methane. When burnt, it produces carbon dioxide, but methane itself is many times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2, so the leakage of methane from appliances is an important consideration for its climate impact.
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and from the Technical University of Munich used mobile backpack gas-analysers to record methane emissions across the Oktoberfest site in 2019.
They found that methane emissions were much higher in the beer tents and when passing the outdoor grilled chicken and fish stalls. Isotopic analysis confirmed that the emissions are primarily associated with leakage of natural gas from cooking appliances and heaters, with 1.4 per cent of the gas leaking.
鈥淭he relatively high leakage rate is surprising and underlines the need to address these end-use emissions from cooking and heating better,鈥� says from the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in Hannover, Germany, who didn鈥檛 participate in the study.
Assuming that methane leakage rates have remained similar over time, the researchers calculate that it would have been beneficial for the Munich Oktoberfest to switch to electric in 2005, when 58 per cent of the electricity there came from renewable sources. In 2019 alone, switching to electric appliances could have saved up to 450 tonnes of CO2 emissions 鈥� equivalent to the average annual emissions of around 50 people in Germany.
But the high proportion of renewable electricity at the festival site isn鈥檛 the norm, even in Germany. Applying the same methodology to the 25 highest natural gas consuming countries, Dietrich and his colleagues calculate that in 18 of them, natural gas is still the more climate-friendly option, due to a lack of renewable electricity.
However, they show that switching to electric appliances could reduce greenhouse emissions in seven of the 25 countries: Canada, Brazil, Venezuela, Belgium, France, the UK and Spain. 鈥淭hese countries have steadily grown their share of renewable energy, though the UK and Spain still rely on a relatively high share of gas-generated electricity and have the greatest potential to reduce their emissions further,鈥� says Dietrich.
Meanwhile, Argentina, Italy, Germany, Russia and the US are approaching the break-even point where natural gas and electricity have the same carbon footprint. But many other countries, including China, Malaysia, Australia, India, Indonesia and Poland, are still a long way from break-even, due to their dependency on gas or coal-fired power stations.
鈥淲hen considering the average methane leakage rate, for most countries the share of renewable energy needs to be improved to make electricity a more climate-friendly energy source compared to natural gas,鈥� says Dietrich.
However, others argue that there are good reasons not to wait until break-even, and to electrify sooner. 鈥淭o avoid locking in greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come, we need to start electrifying today, with the assumption that the grid will become cleaner. Gas appliances last for decades once installed in homes and buildings. On top of the greenhouse gas benefits of electrification, gas stoves harm our health from breathing indoor air pollution, providing another reason to switch,鈥� says at Stanford University in California.
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