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Making the switch as a renter proved a lot harder than I realized.
I have a confession: Electrifying my own home baffles me. Ride the bus more often? No problem. Eat more vegetables? A cinch. But limiting the emissions of my one-bedroom apartment is hard.
As a New York renter, I have no real choices. My heat comes from natural gas — via a radiator I have little control over — and so does the fuel for cooking. The (increasingly fervent) conversations about replacing gas appliances with electric were always of more theoretical than practical interest to me.
However, faced with replacing my own range, I got a front row seat to how complicated the process can be for renters. Not only did I come up against practical realities that made an induction stove a hard sell for my landlord, but I also realized how much we’ll resist decarbonizing our homes simply because it’s a huge hassle. It’s just easier to use the infrastructure we are accustomed to, even for those of us who know better. Fighting that inertia, then, is our challenge.
My first thought that Sunday was “gas!”
A faint but distinct rotten egg odor had snuck under my bedroom door. I dashed to the kitchen, checked that the burners were turned off. But all seemed well. In fact, the odor seemed to have dissipated and was probably just the remnants of a neighbor’s burned-something anyway. False alarm. I returned to my regularly scheduled Sunday morning programming of coffee and my book until an afternoon potluck across Brooklyn.
(I did open the windows, just in case. But I also used the range as usual, making croutons from stale bread. Hubristic, I know.)
When I returned post-potluck, though, the sulfuric smell had returned, concentrated and unmistakable. Google told me to call my utility or even 911 and not to touch any of my appliances. As I waited in the lobby for National Grid, I thought guiltily of the croutons.
An officious duo confirmed my fears: I had a gas leak. Two, actually, both from the stove itself and from the nozzle where it connects to the wall. Once they disconnected it, tagged it, and bustled out of the apartment, I felt momentarily grateful that I had already planned to eat salad for dinner, stranded as I now was without the means to cook.
And then I opened my laptop to begin Mission Induction Stove.
Before the leak, I thought of gas as a nonnegotiable reality of renting in New York City. Aside from one friend who abhorred her unreliable electric stove, everyone I know used the gas range that came with their apartments, many without even an exhaust fan or vent hood.
I was astonished to learn that most people in the U.S. do not rely on natural gas for cooking, because I have lived solely in places that do: first in California, which at 70% has the country’s highest rate of natural gas use for cooking, and now in New York. Otherwise, though, I was well-versed in the facts: that gas-burning stoves are a major source of methane and nitrogen dioxide, which can prompt asthma and other health problems, and that they can also emit the carcinogen benzene and other chemicals.
But I spent most of my career compartmentalizing these facts when it came time to cook. In a bid to protect my lungs, I used the exhaust fan and left the windows open. While I considered buying a plug-in induction burner — as Sam Calisch, head of special projects for Rewiring America, recommended when I consulted him for this story — my lack of spare counter space and tendency to cook on multiple burners at once caused me to kick that can down the road.
Presented with the leak, though, I decided to lobby for a better replacement. Electric-powered induction ranges are precise and powerful, using an electromagnetic field to heat cookware directly. While they once were a niche and expensive offering, they have begun to catch on. New York State’s own energy research office recommends induction as “the better way to upgrade your kitchen.”
My goal was to convince my generally quite reasonable landlord that an induction stove would cost the same as a gas replacement, if not less.
Via email, I channeled Consumer Reports: “I found several well-reviewed induction options,” I wrote, including one from Samsung and one from Frigidaire that I described as “particularly promising” and likely to “work for far longer than the two years that the Summit one did.”
I am thrilled to report that this tack seemed initially to work. “I will look into it,” my landlord said on the phone. “We certainly don’t want more gas leaks.” I soared, imagining boiling water for pasta in half the time.
This optimism was premature.
There were two crucial details that I failed to consider as I made my plea.
The first is that New York apartments are not large, and neither are their appliances. My stove is 24 inches, smaller than the standard 30. But, accustomed to zero elbow room, I forgot this and sent my landlord only 30-inch options. When I realized my error, I was dismayed to find only one induction option that would fit: a ZLINE range that cost more than twice as much as my old stove.
While the induction chorus is swiftly growing (especially in light of the news that the Consumer Product Safety Commission is weighing how best to regulate gas stoves) the market remains small. Only about 4 million U.S. households used induction as of 2020. Accordingly, there are just a few options on offer, and as a renter with a small kitchen I fell into a hole in the market.
However, the market is projected to grow considerably in the coming years, and Rewiring America’s Calisch told me that “as more households adopt this technology, product selection will continue to grow.” Banning gas stoves in new buildings, as New York City did starting in 2025 for smaller buildings and 2027 for larger, might also bring more options to market.
Despite its high price-tag, I sent my landlord the ZLINE option as a Hail Mary. This is when I came up against crucial detail number two.
I mentioned to an electrician I was trying to replace my gas stove with induction, and he was incredulous: “Management green-lit those electrical upgrades?”
As I should have realized, switching to induction can mean upgrading the wiring to a 220-volt outlet protected by 40-50 amp breakers. In an old building like mine, that can be complicated. A Carbon Switch survey of 90 induction purchasers found that 59 of them had to pay for some sort of electrical work, with an average price tag of $987.
While these upgrades are worthwhile to homeowners looking for the climate and health benefits of an induction stove, I imagine that the landlord/renter divide makes them less likely in homes like mine. Installing a new outlet or upgrading an electrical panel involves far more moving parts than simply ordering a new stove would. And the hassle and expense would be borne by my building’s management, while the benefits would be enjoyed by me.
But there are policies that could help renters make the case to their landlords, such as energy use benchmarking. Benchmarking requires buildings to disclose their energy intensity, which “can be a proxy for how expensive the utilities in a building are,” Calisch said. This can incentivize property owners to invest in efficient appliances because renters, who foot their own electricity and gas bills, will appreciate apartments with low projected energy costs. New York City already applies benchmarking requirements for buildings of more than 25,000 square feet (though not mine, sadly).
Performance standards can be used as a complement for benchmarking, Calisch said, which represent efficiency goals that property owners must meet through building or appliance improvements.
“The key part of this policy is setting the standard such that electric appliances are the only path to meeting them,” he added.
Ultimately, the pricey ZLINE model was rejected. I ended up instead with a new gas stove, which was installed last week.
It is fine: a stainless steel model by GE that is a perfectly serviceable version of the gas stoves I have been using all my life. The warming drawer is even big enough to fit my cookie sheets, which is the kind of small win for my kitchen I would have cheered in any other context.
But after picturing a sleek and emissions-free induction alternative, the new stove felt banal. I was relieved, thrilled even, to finally cook hot food in my own apartment after weeks of salads and sandwiches, but I found myself waiting for water to boil with a twinge of impatience. And my least favorite kitchen chore — wiping down the stove — was even more annoying after I got my hopes up about the glass-topped, easily-cleaned ZLINE. My nose also twitches more than usual at the smell of gas, and I’m more likely to remember to open the windows while I cook.
So perhaps it will come as no surprise that while writing this article, I took a quick break to buy a portable induction burner: my kitchen’s tiny victory in the face of inertia.
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Though it might not be as comprehensive or as permanent as renewables advocates have feared, it’s also “just the beginning,” the congressman said.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team is drafting an executive order to “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast, working with the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, the congressman said in a press release from his office Monday afternoon.
“This executive order is just the beginning,” Van Drew said in a statement. “We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”
The announcement indicates that some in the anti-wind space are leaving open the possibility that Trump’s much-hyped offshore wind ban may be less sweeping than initially suggested.
In its press release, Van Drew’s office said the executive order would “lay the groundwork for permanent measures against the projects,” leaving the door open to only a temporary pause on permitting new projects. The congressman had recently told New Jersey reporters that he anticipates only a six-month moratorium on offshore wind.
The release also stated that the “proposed order” is “expected to be finalized within the first few months of the administration,” which is a far cry from Trump’s promise to stop projects on Day 1. If enacted, a pause would essentially halt all U.S. offshore wind development because the sought-after stretches of national coastline are entirely within federal waters.
Whether this is just caution from Van Drew’s people or a true moderation of Trump’s ambition we’ll soon find out. Inauguration Day is in less than a week.
Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as long as your colleagues on the ground due to flight time limitations, but the maximum scheduling allows — not to mention the added external pressures you’re also facing. Even the incoming president recently wondered aloud why the fires aren’t under control yet and insinuated that it’s your and your colleagues’ fault.
You’re on a sortie, getting ready for a particularly white-knuckle drop at a low altitude in poor visibility conditions when an object catches your eye outside the cockpit window: an authorized drone dangerously close to your wing.
Aerial firefighters don’t have to imagine this terrifying scenario; they’ve lived it. Last week, a drone punched a hole in the wing of a Québécois “super soaker” plane that had traveled down from Canada to fight the fires, grounding Palisades firefighting operations for an agonizing half-hour. Thirty minutes might not seem like much, but it is precious time lost when the Santa Ana winds have already curtailed aerial operations.
“I am shocked by what happened in Los Angeles with the drone,” Anna Lau, a forestry communication coordinator with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, told me. The Montana DNRC has also had to contend with unauthorized drones grounding its firefighting planes. “We’re following what’s going on very closely, and it’s shocking to us,” Lau went on. Leaving the skies clear so that firefighters can get on with their work “just seems like a no-brainer, especially when people are actively trying to tackle the situation at hand and fighting to save homes, property, and lives.”
Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
Although the super soaker collision was by far the most egregious case, according to authorities there have been at least 40 “incidents involving drones” in the airspace around L.A. since the fires started. (Notably, the Federal Aviation Administration has not granted any waivers for the air space around Palisades, meaning any drone images you see of the region, including on the news, were “probably shot illegally,” Intelligencer reports.) So far, law enforcement has arrested three people connected to drones flying near the L.A. fires, and the FBI is seeking information regarding the super soaker collision.
Such a problem is hardly isolated to these fires, though. The Forest Service reports that drones led to the suspension of or interfered with at least 172 fire responses between 2015 and 2020. Some people, including Mike Fraietta, an FAA-certified drone pilot and the founder of the drone-detection company Gargoyle Systems, believe the true number of interferences is much higher — closer to 400.
Law enforcement likes to say that unauthorized drone use falls into three buckets — clueless, criminal, or careless — and Fraietta was inclined to believe that it’s mostly the former in L.A. Hobbyists and other casual drone operators “don’t know the regulations or that this is a danger,” he said. “There’s a lot of ignorance.” To raise awareness, he suggested law enforcement and the media highlight the steep penalties for flying drones in wildfire no-fly zones, which is punishable by up to 12 months in prison or a fine of $75,000.
“What we’re seeing, particularly in California, is TikTok and Instagram influencers trying to get a shot and get likes,” Fraietta conjectured. In the case of the drone that hit the super soaker, it “might have been a case of citizen journalism, like, Well, I have the ability to get this shot and share what’s going on.”
Emergency management teams are waking up, too. Many technologies are on the horizon for drone detection, identification, and deflection, including Wi-Fi jamming, which was used to ground climate activists’ drones at Heathrow Airport in 2019. Jamming is less practical in an emergency situation like the one in L.A., though, where lives could be at stake if people can’t communicate.
Still, the fact of the matter is that firefighters waste precious time dealing with drones when there are far more pressing issues that need their attention. Lau, in Montana, described how even just a 12-minute interruption to firefighting efforts can put a community at risk. “The biggest public awareness message we put out is, ‘If you fly, we can’t,’” she said.
Fraietta, though, noted that drone technology could be used positively in the future, including on wildfire detection and monitoring, prescribed burns, and communicating with firefighters or victims on the ground.
“We don’t want to see this turn into the FAA saying, ‘Hey everyone, no more drones in the United States because of this incident,’” Fraietta said. “You don’t shut down I-95 because a few people are running drugs up and down it, right? Drones are going to be super beneficial to the country long term.”
But critically, in the case of a wildfire, such tools belong in the right hands — not the hands of your neighbor who got a DJI Mini 3 for Christmas. “Their one shot isn’t worth it,” Lau said.
Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Friday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?
Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for some of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.
Read on for everything we know so far about how the fires started.
Six major fires started during the Santa Ana wind event last week:
Officials are investigating the cause of the fires and have not made any public statements yet. Early eyewitness accounts suggest that the Eaton Fire may have started at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison. So far, the company has maintained that an analysis of its equipment showed “no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire.” A Washington Post investigation found that the Palisades Fire could have risen from the remnants of a fire that burned on New Year’s Eve and reignited.
On Thursday morning, Edward Nordskog, a retired fire investigator from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told me it was unlikely they had even begun looking into the root of the biggest and most destructive of the fires in the Pacific Palisades. “They don't start an investigation until it's safe to go into the area where the fire started, and it just hasn't been safe until probably today,” he said.
It can take years to determine the cause of a fire. Investigators did not pinpoint the cause of the Thomas Fire until March 2019, more than two years after it started.
But Nordskog doesn’t think it will take very long this time. It’s easier to narrow down the possibilities for an urban fire because there are typically both witnesses and surveillance footage, he told me. He said the most common causes of wildfires in Los Angeles are power lines and those started by unhoused people. They can also be caused by sparks from vehicles or equipment.
At more than 40,000 acres burned total, these fires are unlikely to make the charts for the largest in California history. But because they are burning in urban, densely populated, and expensive areas, they could be some of the most devastating. With an estimated 9,000 structures damaged as of Friday morning, the Eaton and Palisades fires are likely to make the list for most destructive wildfire events in the state.
And they will certainly be at the top for costliest. The Palisades Fire has already been declared a likely contender for the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history. It has destroyed more than 5,000 structures in some of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Between that and the Eaton Fire, Accuweather estimates the damages could reach $57 billion.
While we don’t know the root causes of the ignitions, several factors came together to create perfect fire conditions in Southern California this week.
First, there’s the Santa Ana winds, an annual phenomenon in Southern California, when very dry, high-pressure air gets trapped in the Great Basin and begins escaping westward through mountain passes to lower-pressure areas along the coast. Most of the time, the wind in Los Angeles blows eastward from the ocean, but during a Santa Ana event, it changes direction, picking up speed as it rushes toward the sea.
Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told me that Santa Ana winds typically blow at maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour, while the winds this week hit upwards of 60 to 70 miles per hour. “More severe than is normal, but not unique,” he said. “We had similar severe winds in 2017 with the Thomas Fire.”
Second, Southern California is currently in the midst of extreme drought. Winter is typically a rainier season, but Los Angeles has seen less than half an inch of rain since July. That means that all the shrubland vegetation in the area is bone-dry. Again, Keeley said, this was not usual, but not unique. Some years are drier than others.
These fires were also not a question of fuel management, Keeley told me. “The fuels are not really the issue in these big fires. It's the extreme winds,” he said. “You can do prescription burning in chaparral and have essentially no impact on Santa Ana wind-driven fires.” As far as he can tell, based on information from CalFire, the Eaton Fire started on an urban street.
While it’s likely that climate change played a role in amplifying the drought, it’s hard to say how big a factor it was. Patrick Brown, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, published a long post on X outlining the factors contributing to the fires, including a chart of historic rainfall during the winter in Los Angeles that shows oscillations between wet and dry years over the past eight decades.
But climate change is expected to make dry years drier and wet years wetter, creating a “hydroclimate whiplash,” as Daniel Swain, a pre-eminent expert on climate change and weather in California puts it. In a thread on Bluesky, Swain wrote that “in 2024, Southern California experienced an exceptional episode of wet-to-dry hydroclimate whiplash.” Last year’s rainy winter fostered abundant plant growth, and the proceeding dryness primed the vegetation for fire.
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Editor’s note: This story was last update on Monday, January 13, at 10:00 a.m. ET.