Cooking with (less) gas

Whoever first said that a watched pot never boils was probably thinking about my kitchen. The stove is so slow when it comes to boiling water that it’d probably be quicker for me to turn the heat off and wait for the pot to spontaneously combust.

Your stove can be one of the biggest consumers of electricity in your home, says Frank Villalobos, appliance service instructor at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. A lot of that energy waste comes down to technology.

When it comes to stoves (a.k.a. ranges), you have three options, reports Michelle St-Amand of Epcor: electric resistance (conventional), gas, and induction. An induction stove is 90 per cent efficient, a conventional one 65, and a gas one 55.

It’s the way the heat transfer works, Villalobos explains. Electric coil and smooth cook-top stoves create heat through resistance, and that heat has to get through insulation/the cook-top and the pot before it gets to the food. They also have only one setting: full blast. Set them to half power, and they’ll simply turn off for half the time, resulting in lost energy as the coils re-heat.

Induction stoves use a magnetic field to create resistance and heat in the pot itself, Villalobos continues.

“Your pot becomes the element,” he says.

This makes for much faster cooking. A test by SCHOTT North America suggests that an induction stove boils a pot of water in about four minutes, compared to seven for a regular stove and eight for a gas one.

Natural Resources Canada’s (NRCAN’s) energy efficient product database suggests that conventional coil-based stoves use about 465 kilowatt-hours of power per year, compared to about 336 kWh/yr for induction stoves – assuming the stoves in question are between 95 and 125 litres in size.

Carbon-wise, a 336 kWh/yr induction stove produce about 215 kg of CO2/yr in Alberta, compared to about 298 kg for a 465 kWh/yr conventional one.

(It’s tough to say if a gas stove is better than an induction one for carbon. Induction is more efficient, but electricity is much dirtier than gas in Alberta. Since induction stoves can become emissions-free through the purchase of green electricity (e.g. through Epcor’s Chirp program), I’m going to give them the edge here.)

An induction stove uses about 129 kWh less per year in power than a conventional one, which at $0.11 per kWh translates to $14.19 a year in savings.

Scott Cowan, of Trail Appliances in Calgary, says an induction stove costs about $1,800, or about $800 more than a conventional stove. That doesn’t include the potential cost of new pots and pans – the stoves only work with magnetic cookware.

Even if you already have the right cookware, it’ll take you about 56 years to recover the $800 price premium on the induction stove at today’s electricity prices.

That makes buying induction a tough sell if you’re only after reducing carbon – you’re probably better off just buying the most efficient regular range you can find, (look for the lowest EnerGuide number possible), as that will still save you energy relative to your current old clunky one.

Other ways to save:

The payback time for commercial products is much better. NRCAN’s Simple Energy Calculator shows that you can get an Energy Star-compliant commercial electric oven for about the same price as a conventional one and save yourself about $157 a year. You’ll also prevent some 1.2 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

That’s why chef Peter Skwaruk, of Edmonton’s Craft Beer Market, tricked out his kitchen entirely with Energy Star-compliant appliances. It wasn’t cheap, but he estimates that he’ll make the additional money he spent back in about two years.

The efficient appliances save Skwaruk time and money, as they mean lower energy bills and shorter cook times (they hold onto their heat better, he explains). It also means less wear on the machines.

“It’s better down the road to use less energy,” he says.

“You’ll be the winner in the end.”

You can still trim your energy bill if you don’t want to invest in a new stove, notes Melanie Smith, St. Albert’s official Queen of Green Coach with the David Suzuki Foundation. Use the convection setting on your oven, and use glass or ceramic pans instead of metal ones – those hold heat so well that you can often shut off your oven 10 minutes ahead of schedule.

And don’t open the door to peek at the food, St-Amand says – each peek releases enough hot air to drop your oven’s temperature by up to 24 C.

My next stove will be an induction one. The payback is terrible, but the speed and carbon savings can’t be beat.

Plus, I think it might actually get that watched pot to boil.