The War on Natural Gas Ramps Up

Banning gas stoves looms

When the “shale revolution” was getting underway in the early 2000s, the anti-fossil fuel activists focused on air emissions during drilling and the possibility of water pollution from the hydraulic fracturing process. I was Director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council starting in 2007 and dealt with these groups frequently. Some actually supported the idea that natural gas was a transition fuel that could displace coal-fired power generation.

These groups supported that position because natural gas was thought to be limited in supply, harkening back to the “peak oil” theory developed by M. King Hubert in the last 1950s. The anti-fossil groups turned against natural gas when the shale revolution revealed that the United States had hundreds of years of natural gas reserves.  They then started attacking natural gas as a dangerous air pollutant.

One of the first attacks alleging that natural gas drilling and production created air pollution was a study by Al Armendariz, an engineering professor at SMU in Dallas, Texas.  The study, which the Environmental Defense Fund funded, alleged that data collected from Barnett Shale natural gas wells in North Texas emitted more dangerous air pollutants than all cars and trucks in Dallas/Fort Worth. I was one of the first to criticize his allegation in a paper debunking Armendariz’s assertion.

While calls to ban natural gas rely on the argument that it emits CO2, even though it is the lowest emitter of all fossil fuels, the ban movement has moved from stopping drilling and fracking to banning its use. The state of California recently enacted legislation banning natural gas furnaces and heaters in the state by 2030, and New York governor Kathy Hochul has proposed banning natural gas heating and appliances in the state’s new buildings by 2025 for small buildings and 2030 for large buildings.

The latest ban on natural gas comes from the federal level and focuses on eliminating or severely restricting the use of gas stoves. This became a hot topic in the news early this year when reports said the Biden administration was considering banning gas stoves.

There was widespread outrage when the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) admitted that it was considering regulating natural gas stoves.  The outrage was so intense that the Biden administration issued a statement saying they were not considering banning natural gas stoves. 

However, CPSC soon admitted that they were concerned about the “growing body of research” that supposedly linked gas stoves to negative health impacts and were developing standards to address those health impacts. As David Blackmon wrote:

“The DOE’s proposed regulation would set unprecedented energy consumption limits for gas stoves and other gas appliances, an obvious ‘camel’s nose under the tent’ first step in moving towards a ban, which has long been a goal of environmentalist groups who support Democratic election candidates. Regulatory actions such as this one and the move by the CPSC seldom germinate up organically among the career bureaucracy; most often, they are the result of lobbying efforts from outside interest groups. This is no secret.”

As noted in an article in National Review by Steve Everley in January 2023, a study from Stanford University claimed that the “climate and health impacts of natural gas stoves are greater than previously thought” and called for “ending the use of residential natural gas.” Like a previous study from UCLA, the study was based on an environment without ventilation: The authors created an “airtight portion of the room,” and “clear plastic sheets were sealed along the ceiling, walls, and floor.” It should go without saying that an “airtight” kitchen encased in plastic sheets is not representative of any real-world kitchen.”

All of the “studies” about the health effects of gas stoves have been based on absurd air sampling techniques, with their descriptions hidden in footnotes and the biases of the authors on display for keen readers.

As Everley noted, “Americans clearly do not support banning gas stoves, but with the campaign to advance those bans ramping up and pressuring local governments, the truth is needed more than ever — and the stakes could not be higher. We will soon see just how far the Federal regulators will go to chip away at the use of natural gas.