Cooking with(out) gas

In the 1930s, the natural gas industry came up with a slogan to persuade Americans to use gas stoves, not electric ones: “Now you’re cooking with gas.” It became a part of the American lexicon, shorthand for doing something right.

Here we are almost 100 years later, and more than 87 million homes — two-thirds of the nation’s households — are cooking, heating, cooling, drying clothes or warming the bathwater with gas, according the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Housing Survey. New Yorkers rely on gas even more, with 86 percent of households using it for one purpose or another.

So it’s little wonder that a company like Iroquois Gas Transmission System wants to boost capacity to move more gas through two sites in Greene and Dutchess counties, to allow utilities like National Grid and Con Edison to meet the demand from customers.

But with the state Department of Environmental Conservation set to hold a public hearing Tuesday on whether to greenlight the projects, it has more to consider than the needs of the moment. New York’s long-term goal is essentially the opposite of what the natural gas industry set out nearly a century ago to achieve — to turn people off natural gas, and to get them to use electricity instead. Clean electricity, at that.

The effort, mandated under the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, will require both small- and large-scale changes. In the broad sense, for example, the state is looking to get 70 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. On a more individual level, a plan from the state’s Climate Action Council prohibits fossil-fuel heating units and appliances in all new homes starting in 2025, and bans using them as replacements in existing homes after 2030.

But the state’s goals and reality haven’t always dovetailed. Case in point: In an apparent effort to pressure the state into allowing more gas pipelines, National Grid in 2019 announced a moratorium on new gas hookups, saying it needed sufficient capacity to serve existing customers. In an unintended way, the move was in accord with the state’s goals, since it would have encouraged more use of electricity for heating and cooking. But then- Gov. Andrew Cuomo forced National Grid to lift the unpopular moratorium. And now, unsurprisingly, there’s more demand.

The state needs a more coherent approach, and the DEC’S consideration of Iroquois’ gas projects is a good a place to start developing one in practice, not just on paper. Clearly, it needs to meet the current demand — but no more. Why not borrow a page from National Grid’s playbook and impose a moratorium on any new gas hookups?

We’re well aware of the challenges of shifting from fossil fuels to clean energy. But all those new electrical hookups won’t happen at once; the state has time to bring more power on line as demand gradually grows. The answer to perceived future challenges shouldn’t be to retreat from New York’s clean-energy goals by allowing yet another pipeline here, another few thousand gas furnaces or stoves there. That may be cooking with gas, but it sure isn’t doing climate leadership right.