The stove is perhaps one of the most used appliances in your kitchen. So let’s think about how the oven works and the impact using it can cause on you and the health of you, your bank account and your family. As it turns out, the two types of stoves commonly used today – powered by natural gas or electricity – are very different.
Gas and electric stoves are very different stoves from each other, varying in the cooking experience, power source, the costs associated, and the environmental impacts of each. If you are looking to make a change in the oven, there are a lot of different factors to consider. For many Canadians, the choice might have already been made for you. Considering the vast majority of rentals and new homes have kitchens prepared for an electric oven or have one already inside, you might not have any experience with a gas oven. Since Canadian numbers were unavailable, the closest comparison we found showed that only 35% of US homes cook with gas today.
In this article, we are going to discuss the pros and cons of each type of oven/stove in terms of their energy consumption and the cost of operation, as well as health and environmental concerns. While there are other factors at play in your decision, like the experience of cooking with or cleaning either oven, I’ll try to stick to the subject at hand.
Throughout this article, we will discuss gas and electricity as two different archetypes of ovens, distinguished by their primary source of power. Electric ovens vary a lot from each other depending on how it uses the electricity to heat food and will refer to both the conventional oven, as well as advanced appliances that run on electricity like convection ovens and induction stoves. Whereas Gas stoves are any stove powered by natural gas combusted in the home.
The Electric Oven
Pros: Easy to clean, versatility, precision, cheaper installation costs, safer.
Cons: Higher costs, lower reliability and durability, slower.
In 2023, the broader category of electric ovens is the predominant way we cook our food across North America. Electric ovens have been present in every rental property I have lived in, and I’m sure that others have had a similar experience as well.
It makes sense: electricity is ubiquitous, and not every house or apartment has a natural gas line running into their kitchen, so installation is much easier and cheaper when it comes to electric stoves.
Electric ovens do have some downsides, however. They typically require longer than their gas counterparts to pre-heat, meaning more time idle and longer periods of the oven being on. They can be expensive, but installation is generally cheaper and easier than a gas stove. They are not as dependable as gas stoves either, with electrical components that can fail more commonly than the components on a gas stove.
The Gas Oven
Pros: Faster heating and cooking, lower operating cost, durable.
Cons: Open flames, costly hookups, air pollution.
On the other hand, the long-time mainstay of the North American kitchen, the classic gas stove is one that has a lot of varied opinions on it. Powered by natural gas, the same power source that we often use to heat our homes, natural gas ovens were the more popular choice for years, but are not as common as electric stoves today.
While most homes can potentially power a gas stove, a kitchen that has not had a gas stove before might not have the connection to a gas line accessible to power the oven. As a result, installation of a gas stove can vary extremely from home to home and ultimately be costly.
The base cost of gas ovens is said to be more expensive upfront, providing savings down the road as the cost to operate is cheaper. Overall, you can get either oven within the same price range.
One mark against electric ovens is slower heating. More specifically, gas ovens can preheat between twice and thrice faster than electric ovens. Additionally, since you are cooking over an open flame, the stovetop is instantly hot. Additionally, you need to infer heat by the flame colour and height, which can be like learning a new skill.
Contrast this with the precision of the electric oven. The easily controllable knobs on the electric oven let you dial in low heat for simmering to high heat for searing. However, there is a time period you will need to wait for the oven or burner to come to heat.
This is just one of the mechanical trade-offs between the two types of oven, but it also does have a significant impact on how you cook with the stove.
Environmental concerns
While there are disagreements about which of the oven options is better for your wallet, gas ovens do pose more environmental concerns that are worth discussing. But one thing that is often falsely attributed to gas ovens is their energy efficiency. Since it has been historically cheaper to run gas ovens, there seem to be a few misguided sources we found that suggested gas stoves are better environmentally. This is not the case.
Since the majority of Canada’s electricity is either hydro or natural gas generated (depending on where you live), using electricity to cook will have a similar net environmental impact than natural gas at worst, and can be significantly greener in provinces like B.C., Manitoba, and Quebec. Burning natural gas, while burning natural gas is less emitting than alternatives like coal, it still releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The main environmental difference between the two ovens comes down to burning natural gas at a power plant versus inside your kitchen.
As one source stated: “about 74% of the energy produced on an electric range is transferred to the food whereas only 40% of the energy from gas models is channeled toward heating your meals.”
Additionally, the gaseous nature of natural gas means leaks are common and detrimental to the environment. It is really hard to promote gas stoves as an efficient option when they leak methane – one of the most potent greenhouse gases – even while turned off. A 2022 study determined that gas stoves in the U.S. released 2.4 Million tonnes of CO2 each year while not in operation. That is in addition to the pollutants naturally produced when the oven is in use.
The burning of gas in your home is particularly noteworthy, as in the home it can produce nitrogen oxides and other chemicals with potentially detrimental effects on our health. Research completed in 2018 found that using a gas stove coincided with high levels of chemicals including nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and nitrous acid (HONO) in the home, as well as long-lasting concentrations of these pollutants after cooking.
Health risks
Gas stoves are major sources of pollutants indoors, including nitrogen dioxide. A 2018 study measured the levels of atmospheric chemicals in a New York home with a gas stove and found that using the gas stove coincided with levels of Nitrogen-based chemicals including Nitrogen Dioxide that were between 20 and 100 times stronger than the background levels. A similar experiment was carried out in this NPR article, which shows the NO2 levels in a home after just operating a gas stove and oven under normal conditions rose to 168 ppb (parts per billion), which is much higher than the WHO hourly guideline of 106 ppb. After one hour of oven usage, this number hit 207 ppb.
It has been long suspected that Nitrogen Dioxide has a detrimental impact on human health, however, the chemical’s effect on humans is not clearly understood, as there has been “no separate, independent assessment of the mechanistic, toxicological and human clinical studies relating nitrogen dioxide to human health” (WHO Air Quality Guidelines, pg.121). This is not to say that Nitrogen Dioxide might be fully safe for humans – just the causality of the chemical’s impact on human health has not fully been established. Comprehensive evaluations of Health Canada and the EPA highly support the idea that Nitrogen Dioxide is a pollutant that poses harm to us in high concentrations.
Respiratory illnesses are the number one health impact of gas stoves in the home. The research has long supported the idea that Nitrogen Dioxide, including this article published in 1992 that shows around 20% of kids who live in a home with gas stove had a increased risk of developing respiratory illnesses by 20%. Additionally, a 2022 analysis performed by the Rocky Mountain Institute attributed 12.7% of childhood asthma in the US today to gas stove usage in the home. There can be serious risks your loved ones will be exposed to if you cook regularly with gas and do not take extra precautions.
What can be done to reduce the health risks?
Ventilation and considerate use of your gas stove can help mitigate the risks of the air pollution created by your gas oven, but only partly. Using your hood fan is a good first step – granted your hood fan pumps outside and doesn’t just run the ventilated air through a filter and back into your kitchen. However, Researcher Tara Kahan in an interview with the CBC states that hood fans only can cut pollutant levels approximately in half.
Other things that you can do to reduce the pollution from a gas stove include being organized and prepared (so you can limit the amount of time that the oven is on), cooking on the back burner for optimal ventilation, and even just opening a window in the kitchen.
So, does it make a difference? In the aforementioned NPR interview, scientist Josiah Kephart states: “If you have a large kitchen with really up-to-date ventilation systems,” he says, “and you have a healthy body, this may not be your biggest concern or the biggest risk to your health.” But it is absolutely something you should still consider when making the choice between the two oven types, especially if you have a young family.
An analysis of price:
On many sites and articles, including from Direct Energy, it is claimed that gas ovens are much more cost-effective than their electric counterparts. And it seems to make sense: conventional knowledge states that natural gas is a cheaper resource than electricity. According to BlvdHome.com, a gas stove is 10-30% cheaper to operate than a gas stove, despite the gas stove using more energy over that time.
Of course, the difference in cost between electricity and natural gas will vary drastically over time and across the various markets in Canada, and so there are many implicit assumptions in this number that are not touched upon. As we have touched on in previous articles, energy prices per province are impacted by natural resources available, so while natural gas might be cheaper in Alberta, Hydro-Electricity is relatively much cheaper than gas in provinces like B.C. and Quebec.
A quick analysis of retail pricing of gas ovens (between approximately $800-4,000) and Electric ovens ($700-3,000) alike show that the price range is quite similar, but electric can be slightly cheaper to buy.
In conclusion, while there is a lot of subjective rhetoric about the cost-effectiveness of gas ovens versus electric ovens, the objective scientific consensus shows that natural gas ovens are on their way out.
