1y ago

Electricity prices are more than double gas prices in Belgium (so why do Belgians overwhelmingly favor electric ovens?)

Electricity prices are more than double gas prices in Belgium (so why are Belgians running electric ovens?) - Brussels - Fedia

33 comments

Gas ovens poison your home and make you stupid.
- That depends on how well vented they are. Most people undersize their range hoods for aesthetics and don’t take venting seriously. Of course recent findings show it’s a bad idea to cut corners on that with gas stoves, and ovens to some extent. But it’s mostly stoves that have the issue you describe.
  
  While they are less of a problem when they’re better vented, they’re still a really big problem. You can’t possibly vent them well enough.
It’s Time To Break Up With Our Gas Stoves | Climate Town - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX2aZUav-54
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://www.piped.video/watch?v=hX2aZUav-54
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Was it always the case though? You should probably roll back to data in the 70's for wider house appliance rollout. Then if it's not a thing for a generation, it's never gonna be a thing. For today, electricity is easier to decarbonate I guess
- That's it. Gas used to be cheaper.
  
  Why do you say that in the past tense? You can see from my figures that in Belgium gas is still cheaper.
  This is something that varies from one region to another. In the US, some states have cheaper electric than gas. Electric is less efficient because of big losses in all the conversion steps:
  fuel energy → heat energy→ steam → turbine → transmission → heat energy
  Gas simply has:
  fuel energy → transmission → heat energy
  It is important to note that gas transmission is also lossy due to the impossibility of leak-free main lines, but it’s still more efficient in the end. Thus in most of the world gas is also naturally cheaper due to the efficiency difference. It gets inverted in some regions because of pricing manipulations as well as the drive to promote green energy (and rightfully so -- social responsibility should be incentivized). And in some regions they cut down on the transmission losses by putting the power plant inside or close to the big city. But in Belgium gas is still cheaper than electric even despite Russia’s war and efforts to get off Russian fuels.

33 comments