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The Surprising Force Stalling Climate Progress: California Restaurants [funded by the gas industry]

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-05-13/california-restaurants-are-a-surprising-force-stalling-climate-progress?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVy

The gas industry funded the whole thing:

In today’s fight over gas, CRA also hasn’t acted on its own. It refuses to say who paid the legal bills for its Berkeley suit. As a nonprofit, it must make its tax filings public. In these forms, nonprofits are supposed to disclose contractors to whom they paid at least $100,000 in the previous year. CRA regularly lists law firms working on its behalf, such as those litigating Covid-related restrictions. But the restaurant group has never disclosed a payment to Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg LLP, the law firm that spearheaded the Berkeley case.

The Berkeley lawsuit topped the $100,000 threshold. When Sarah Jorgensen, the law firm’s founding partner, spoke at a National Propane Gas Association board meeting in February, she was asked what a legal challenge of this sort would cost, according to a recording of the discussion heard by Bloomberg Green. After an NPGA executive estimated it would require $300,000 to $400,000 to take a case to court and “another couple of hundred thousand” for appeals, Jorgensen said “we definitely spent more than that on Berkeley.” In a written response to questions, Jorgensen declined to say who paid their legal bills.

13 comments

Donjuanme

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I wish more people could experience cooking with induction.

Uranium3006

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induction hot plates exist and are quite affordable, and I've even heard of libraries having them for loan

SpaghettiYeti

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I did it for years. I loathe it.

Donjuanme

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I'm curious what caused you to loathe cooking with induction?

SpaghettiYeti

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Takes sooooo long to heat up pans and I could never keep the thing clean. Food gets baked on and to clean it meant scratching it.

I switched to gas for the first time ever with a new house and I can use Woks again, pans heat up stupid fast, I can actually cook better and more consistently. I love it. It's honestly a guilty pleasure now because I do minimize consumption for so many other things already.

I have solar and shit too, hybrid hot water, etc. etc.

Donjuanme

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Interesting, I've not had similar problems using my cast iron on induction, maybe there wasn't enough current in your system, was it a counter top model or a built in?

Edit: And by "the thing" you meant your pans right?

SpaghettiYeti

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"the thing" is the induction top.

I was using either steel or nonstick pans on the induction stovetop. It was a new home build. It's possible someone didn't do something right with the electrical when built, but it's also unlikely.

deegeese

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So what if it was funded by the gas industry? They’re not wrong, and the restaurant industry agrees with them.

Natural gas use for cooking is a rounding error for climate change.

Why should restaurants be forced to use something expensive and inferior?

silence7

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We need to get to zero, and stoves are a key marketing point that results in the installation of gas heat and a methane-leaking distribution network which are both quite meaningful.

Induction is also @#$@#$ amazing. Not going back to gas. Ever.

admiralteal

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Irrelevant to commercial. A reasonably big restaurant doesn't get enough amps in the panel to replace all their gas equipment with induction, especially in grid-strained California. Not unless it's new construction in an area with quality 3 phase electrical service.

It was a huge, huge, huge mistake that the places that banned new fossil gas installs made it ALL installs instead of just residential.

They made an enemy out of the national restaurant association for no reason and have faced huge setbacks in otherwise-good legislation as a result. It's all just so stupid and shortsighted. Especially since, as the other guy pointed out, commercial gas cooking is not a major contributor. Even just compared to the leaky, awful, terribly, idiotic residential fossil gas network.

RvTV95XBeo

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A reasonably big restaurant doesn't get enough amps in the panel to replace all their gas equipment with induction

This is the true reason more industrial kitchens don't go electric, at least in my experience. This and cost. I work in building design and do a decent number of commercial kitchens.

New kitchens in new buildings tend to be trending towards electric, but retrofits / renovations more often than not are constrained by the (hyper-)local electrical infrastructure.

The chefs we've worked with actually really like cooking with induction, and their teams f*cling love that it's safer and cooler than gas. Electric kitchens lose way less heat to the environment than their gas counterparts, and thus are way more comfortable to be standing in for 8+ hrs/day.

especially in grid-strained California.

Working across the country, I haven't run into this "issue" as much on the CA projects I'm involved in.

Certain locations, especially older urban neighborhoods may have some local capacity issues, but not at the "state" level. I see many of the same issue in older urban areas around the country (and globe).

From my viewpoint, any increase in occurrences in California is largely driven by the fact that CA is the most populous state and simply has more projects interested in / requesting these things.

admiralteal

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Yeah, I run into it a lot in my smallish, somewhat historic town -- though I am not a developer. SO many places where all the staff constantly bitch about how they're always popping breakers and all that stuff. Or where they have to go around sharpie-ing faceplates where you must not plug in kitchen equipment.

Line cooks, in my experience, don't really give that much of a shit about the equipment they need to use. It works or doesn't. The comfortability of the space matters most, and as you said, electric's a huge winner for comfortability.

Chefs are sometimes VERY opinionated about the stupidest shit, and egotistical to boot. You can't really argue with the dude who tells you he KNOWS gas is better (but has never actually used electric). Fortunately, these are a dying breed. Even the NYC pizza joints are switching to electric because it's just plain better.

But if there's one universal truth above all others with the restaurant industry, it is that it is entirely allergic to ANY kind of capital investment. Rewiring a kitchen to switch from gas to electric is just a non-starter. Having to pay an extra however many thousands during initial build to get the utility to bring in 3 phase? Good fucking luck. They'd always rather MacGyver a sketchy solution than invest the money now to improve profitability and quality of life in the long-term. The flipside is, that means buying a $150 commercial induction hob is WAY cheaper than trying to add an additional gas burner -- the latter is usually a flat non-starter, the former means a guy can (lol health code) be sent to poach eggs in the break room.

deegeese

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This is about restaurants, not residential.