Some of Australia’s most famous chefs including Poh Ling and Neil Perry are backing a move away from gas cooktops, championing induction as the future of cooking.
A growing list of Aussie culinary stars have joined the Global Cooksafe Coalition, which advocates for all-electric kitchens in restaurants and homes.
The group, which includes Danielle Alvarez, Christine Manfield and Dan Puskas says induction offers faster cooking, lower bills and cleaner air than gas cooktops.
The great cooktop distraction is tailor-made for today’s virtue-signaling posh.
I have an all-electric house with solar panels and a top-notch induction cooktop. Compared with gas in ease of use, responsiveness, speed, and cleaning, it is not even in the same ballpark.
Who knows where Monash came up with its results? Who cares. It is obviously wrong. I have had two high-end versions that are perfectly adequate, as well as perfectly inferior to gas.
I have four objections to the cooktop push.
First, it will make climate change worse, not better. Unless you only cook during the day or when it’s windy, the electricity used comes from coal. In time, it will come from gas.
So, it makes climate change worse compared with already installed gas.
Second, it does not make anything cheaper. The gas price helps set your wholesale electricity price, so it makes no difference to convert to power. This is especially true if you are shelling out thousands of dollars to replace your appliances.
Third, the real gas culprit in bills and emissions is the gas cartel.
The cooktop distraction was designed by a former gas executive at the gas cartel-sponsored Grattan Institute, whose history of policymaking heavily benefits sponsors over public interest. It is a distraction to prevent us from addressing the real problem in our energy transition: LNG exports.
These have driven the price of gas so high that the overall energy transition is stalled by woefully inadequate investment in low-emission firming power and staggering power price increases turning off the public.
Fourth, I prefer my steak grilled or barbecued, not broiled by induction.
I foresee Australia’s woke army marching in the streets and raiding homes and restaurants to rip out innocent people’s cooktops.
It is the perfect irrelevant cypher to go with the pivot to Palestine.
