Gas stoves are cheaper, heats faster and evenly and it’s also cheaper than electric stoves (not to mention, WAY more eco-friendly, for those who care about the environment).

With all these advantages of gas stoves over electric stoves, why are gas stoves so unpopular in the USA?

48 comments

  1. It isn’t a massive disparity. Its like 60/40 electric.

    Gas doesn’t make sense in high density places like apartment buildings.

  2. Because running gas is not always an option, it requires separate service.

    Every home has electricity.

    Also you are incorrect that gas stoves are unpopular, but only about 50% of homes in the US have natural gas serivice.

  3. Gas is expensive in parts of the country, gas explodes, gas requires a ton of expensive infrastructure, electricity is often cheap here, and electricity can be much more eco and environmentally friendly than gas whereas gas will always be damaging to the environment.

  4. Gas isn’t always an option but every home has electricity. Also, natural gas is methane, a greenhouse gas.

  5. I rent my house. The house has no gas connection whatsoever. I’d much prefer a gas stove/heat, but that’s what I get for being poor.

  6. …didn’t we just have a post a week or two ago about how Americans are living in the dark ages because we all use gas stoves?

    Gas stoves definitely aren’t unpopular. I’ve had gas stoves in about half the places I’ve lived in my life.

  7. Gas stoves are popular in areas where natural gas mains are already in the street. Some people still prefer electric because they’re nervous about the open flame or the indoor air pollution, but I certainly wouldn’t call gas unpopular in places where it’s an option.

    Without a gas main, you’re stuck using a propane tank, which is both more expensive per BTU and involves buying or renting a tank and scheduling refills and must be outdoors and so isn’t even an option in apartments without a yard.

  8. Most people prefer gas, but not all homes have gas service. Also, the cost of electricity vs gas is wildly different depending on where you live. If you live somewhere with good hydroelectric power generation, electric can be considerably less expensive then gas.

  9. >Gas stoves are cheaper

    Not enough of a difference that most people would use that as a deciding factor

    >heats faster and evenly

    Again not enough of a difference for most people to care.

    >also cheaper than electric stoves

    You already said that.

    >not to mention, WAY more eco-friendly,

    That’s just plain false. Where you getting that from?

  10. I don’t know about a “majority of Americans”, but I do know that more houses have power lines than gas lines. Gas is used when possible logistically as well as economically.

  12. *Shrug* it’s just what my house has. The gas is only piped to the fireplace, water heater and furnace. I would prefer a gas range but I’m not paying for the retrofit and I wasn’t going to refuse the house over it.

    Growing up there was no gas service to the area at all, nor did most of my apartments when I was younger have any sort of gas even if it was available in the general area.

    Pretty much everywhere that’s not a shack on a deer lease or something has electric.

  13. Personally, I haven’t seen an electric stove since my grandmother’s house in the mid 1990’s.

    It will vary wildly by location. Not everywhere has the natural gas infrastructure in place.

  14. In Florida.

    Where I live (my specific street), we have been quoted numerous thousands to connect to the closest gas line in order to have gas for our stove, water heater, etc.

    Or we could pay thousands to bury a tank in the ground to use, but would have to replace it periodically.

    Or we could stick with electric

  15. Is gas more efficient and eco-friendly? I’ve always seen that induction and electric is better at heating up your pots and pans, and with gas ranges you spend a lot of that energy heating the kitchen instead of your pan.

    https://www.energystar.gov/about/2021_residential_induction_cooking_tops

    > Conventional residential cooking tops typically employ gas or resistance heating elements to transfer energy with efficiencies of approximately 32% and 75-80% respectively. Residential induction cooking tops … [transfer] energy with approximately 85% efficiency.

  17. Most houses I’ve lived in had gas stoves, in the last 2 houses I lived in, I had a gas clothes dryer too.

  18. That’s objectively untrue. Modern electric stoves, especially induction stoves are way more energy efficient than gas stove tops. Gas stoves only heat faster because they have a much greater total energy output, and even that isn’t always true.

  19. gas stoves are extremely popular in the US. most people prefer them. I’ve only had gas stoves in my life & people with electric are often a little jealous of my gas stove.

    they heat faster, you can still use them when the power goes out, they look nicer (imo), and they’re just better in general.

  20. Gas stoves can kill you easier than electric.

    Gas stoves are bad for the environment (but the stove industry works hard to keep this info out if sight)

    Not all homes can accept gas lines (apartments, town homes etc)

  23. [Climate Town did a good video recently](https://youtu.be/hX2aZUav-54) about how gas isn’t necessarily better in all situations, that electric has come a long way, and there’s also a healthy dose of lobbying from the gas industry to keep gas propped up.

    You don’t always have a choice between gas or electric. If you’re renting, the rental comes as-is and you don’t get the ability to add onto it, at least not to the extent where the utilities will be different. If you’re buying and the home isn’t new, you’re stuck with whatever utilities are already there. And even if you’re building new, you may not have an option depending on where and when you’re building.

  24. We didn’t want to pay for connection service so we just stuck with electric.

    The houses I grew up in all had gas stoves.

  25. This post reads like it was written by a natural gas lobbyist

    About 40% of my state’s power is zero-carbon and my ceramic top electric stove has way, way less heat waste than my old gas stove. I would love to see the math that somehow makes gas more eco-friendly given the circumstances. I’ve also not found that gas heats more evenly or quickly, only that it is more responsive.

  26. Because my local electricity is cleaner, cheaper, and more safe than natural gas. My home is not hooked up to the gas lines which are run locally by the most greedy utility company present in my area.

  27. [Gas Problem](https://youtu.be/CcAJ3_-Hou8)

    [Breaking up with Gas](https://youtu.be/hX2aZUav-54)

    [Why don’t Americans use electric kettles?](https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c)

    [Cooking with magnets](https://youtu.be/Xn1LUo5ra_A)

    Just some videos illustrating the counter arguments. Gas stoves are not always cheaper, nor more efficient, nor more eco-friendly. There are a whole host of variables that make your arguments only true in certain cases.

    But mainly electric stoves are more popular in the US because it is easier for new homes to be tied into the electric infrastructure for all there appliances instead of having to run gas in addition to electric. That said there are plenty of places (mostly larger, older cities) where gas is still a sizable or majority portion of the cooking and heating infrastructure.

  29. We recently moved from Wisconsin (where gas is more prevalent) to Florida, where everything is electric and I HATE THE STOVE….Hate it. Cooking on an electric stove sucks so much. But, alas, they don’t even have gas run in our neighborhood.

  30. Electric stoves don’t have gas leaking issues. Plus California and LA are moving to ban gas stoves.

  31. Electricity is cheaper than gas some places. I know… It impossible that things could be priced differently than “your country”

  32. Because I’m not spending 40,000$ to bring the gas line down our street so I can things on the stove be heated slightly faster. So electric it is.

  35. I have had gas stoves all of my life until my current place which has Electric. IIRC 50% of stoves in the US are Gas.

  36. I’d LOVE to have a gas stove. They are actually considered better for cooking than electric, because the cook has more control over temperature. But I live in a rural area where there are no gas lines, and we only have electricity for everything, heat included. It is hydropower, from dams on a nearby large river.

  37. Where do you get that Gas stoves are more efficient? Adam Ragusea did a video that i thought explained pretty well how electric is more efficient. The amount of “lost heat” on a gas stove compared to electric was pretty interesting. Source for reference [https://youtu.be/CcAJ3_-Hou8](https://youtu.be/CcAJ3_-Hou8)

  39. Gas was historically cheaper, **if you had a gas pipe running to your house**. People who didn’t had to use propane (expensive) or electric.

    Now they’re phasing out gas in favor of electric because we can generate electric power with less greenhouse gas emission than are produced by the equivalent burning of natural gas.

  40. I have a gas stove. Each month, I pay less than $1 in actual gas usage but $25 in base service charges and taxes. It costs me more to have the gas than if I just had an electric stove.

  41. Because fossil fuels in America is a terrible racket that results in everybody owing money to the people who are destroying our planet while simultaneously aiding in its destruction. Whether we know it or not

  43. I love my gas stove.

    But when I rented, they all came with electric. Electric is easier to install. Plug and go. Gas you have to run the lines and worry about leaks.

  44. [You don’t like us when we use gas stoves.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/t8dxwo/gas_stove_why/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)

    [You don’t like us when we use electric stoves.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/yv47im/why_majority_of_americans_use_electric_stoves/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)

    Guess it’s time we try an old-fashioned [iron stove](https://www.fpwhs.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/traditional-woodstove.jpg).

  45. First, gas STOVES heat faster and more evenly than electric. Gas OVENS don’t. Hence the reason why dual fuel ranges are so popular.

    But not everyone has gas lines running to their house. Everyone has electrical to their house. And even those who do have the ability to run gas to their house may not have had that option when the house was built. And is costs a crap ton of money to run gas lines throughout an entire house – way more than any cost savings they might see.

  46. Older (pre 90s or so) apartments and homes in the country don’t have natural gas service.

  47. If you live far outside a city, you won’t have gas, because running gas lines that far is expensive. Instead, you’ll have a propane tank in your back yard. A lot of people don’t want that, so a lot of new homes are just hooked up for electric everything.

    Likewise, I suspect most apartment buildings don’t install gas to the apartments, because that would be one more expense when they’re building them, and they’re already running electricity. Also, you know some idiot is going to pull out his stove and break the gas line, and you’ll have to evacuate the building.

    We have a propane tank, and I’ve never bothered to compare the cost to electricity, because both are pretty cheap anyway. I suspect that’s true of most people.

  48. I’m not sure where you’re setting the idea that gas stoves are unpopular in the US. They aren’t, they’re about 50% of the market.

    Gas stoves are not more efficient – that goes to induction stoves, which are nearly 100% efficient (almost all of the generated heat goes into the pan). Gas stoves are inefficient from that perspective, a lot of heat goes into your room rather than the pan.

    Gas stoves do have a substantially negative effect on indoor air quality if you do not have a range hood that vents outdoors (many people do not), and in general the electric grid pollutes less than burning gas yourself, so I’m not sure how you’ve decided they’re “way more eco-friendly”.

    I have a propane stove and it’s fine, but I’d probably get induction if I were buying a new stove today.

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