In the wake of an uproar in Congress sparked by a Consumer Product Safety Commission member who said the federal agency would consider banning gas stoves due to harmful emissions, the head of the CPSC emerged to put out the fire.
CPSC chief Alexander Hoehn-Saric contradicted Commissioner Richard Trumka, who last week said a national ban on new gas stoves was "on the table."
"I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so," Alexander Hoehn-Saric said, in a statement. He added that the four-person commission is "researching" emissions from gas appliances and looking for ways to reduce related indoor air-quality hazards.
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Trumka cited indoor emissions from gas stoves that are harmful to residents of the estimated 40% of US households that have them in their kitchens as a reason they might be banned. After making that statement, Trumka was roasted by several members of Congress who declared that "unelected bureaucrats" should "not tell Americans how to cook their foods."
However, indoor emissions weren't cited as the primary concern of New York state and city officials who are moving to cut off gas hookups to new apartment buildings and to eliminate gas heating systems as well as gas stoves.
The Empire State is aiming to have a completely decarbonized grid by 2030—the most ambitious such goal in the nation—and it is leaning on building owners to get them to prepare for the transition as they decarbonize their buildings in tandem, aiming to quickly reduce the emissions from buildings, estimated to be 40% of overall greenhouse gas emissions.
This includes phasing out the reliance on national gas, which is primarily methane, a greenhouse gas that is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
NY Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed last week to phase in a ban on natural gas heating and gas-powered appliances in new buildings, beginning in 2025 for smaller buildings and 2028 for larger buildings. Under the proposal, NY also would prohibit the sale of any new fossil-fuel heating systems starting in 2030.
Hochul's plan comes two years after NYC mandated a ban on gas hookups in new buildings of less than seven-stories beginning at the end of this year, and in larger new buildings in 2027.
The argument in Washington over gas stoves came as a team of Harvard researchers revealed that ExxonMobil began developing highly accurate projections of the impact of fossil fuels on climate change as early as the late 1970s.
The Harvard team, working with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, assessed the accuracy of previously unreported forecasts created by the oil giant's scientists from 1977 through 2003 and found them to be "remarkably reliable," according to an analysis the team published in Science, an academic journal.
Specifically, Exxon predicted that fossil fuel emissions would lead to 0.20 degrees Celsius of global warming per decade, with a margin of error of 0.04 degrees, a projection that has proven to be on target, the team said.
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