In our experience…many houses in CA are either poorly insulated or have no insulation. Especially older houses. That could contribute to your higher gas costs if heating is the culprit.
Around here…temps in the 60’s…heat would not even be turned on. Folks would put on a fleece or sweater and be just fine.
Why are CA residents paying so much more for gas and electricity? In another thread, a poster in San Diego mentioned that he was paying something like $0.80/kWh for electricity. I have solar for more than a dozen years now so I practically pay nothing (other than some service charge) for electricity. But if I didn’t have solar, I would have paid about $0.18/kWh here in NJ. Gas costs about $1.20/therm (including delivery charge) last month and the utility company (PSE&G) announced that it would lower gas charge by 23% starting this month (presumably due to warmer winter and lower usage in the Northeast). Utilities are regulated in every state, so the high cost of gas and electricity in CA must be the result of either a) even higher cost of subsidies for various energy initiatives in CA (than in NJ, which also heavily incentivizes the use of renewable energies); or b) much higher and inefficient generation and/or delivery of energies; or c) both. Or is it something else?
Full electrification may sound good on paper. However, if we don’t have the very costly infrastructure (sufficient renewable energy generation so pollutions aren’t just reproduced elsewhere, and its efficient delivery by ultra high voltage transmission lines so large amount of energy isn’t lost in transmission), it’s just a pipe dream.
Smoking weed on a regular basis is far worse for your health than cooking with a gas stove. So why would a state legalize the former and look to ban the latter? It’s not about the health risks – that’s just a pretext.
Good luck in CA with an already failing electric grid, outlawing purchase of gas-powered cars in the future, and wanting to prohibit use of gas-powered stoves and heating. In the summer months in CA, it happens regularly now that there are rolling blackouts on hot days.
Hope they all go and purchase some bicycles and solar ovens because without reliable electricity, you won’t be able to do much of anything.
It’s totally ridiculous.
Startup founders, are you reading this? Here’s the next one for ya - a solar battery powered cooktop for every home in the US! 
Let’s go, entrepreneurs!
Is H Northern European by any chance. I do very much the same. Maybe not first thing in the morning during the winter months, but most days I will air out the house.
We heat with a central fireplace. Hubby likes to keep things at 70 - so I try to sneak in those airing out sessions when he’s not there to witness. 
Our electrical and LNG costs have sky rocketed. We’ve entertained solar but are reluctant to put out the initial costs. Plus those panels just look ugly on the roof. AFAIK, CA is changing its solar structure this year. Something about one will now have to pay the power company some $$ when one feeds back the excess energy. We’ve talked about a solar system which would not connect to the grid in anyway but just support this house. Again, AFAIK, that is not the type of installation which is allowed if done by a solar firm. Maybe a few off market panels which would then feed our house is possible. H is quite capable of such an install.
IMO the whole gas stove uproar is one big eye roll. There is an eating disorder known as orthorexia. It’s where someone is so concerned with being absolutely perfect in their eating behaviors that it becomes an all consuming concern which drives all other behavior. It consumes that persons life.
CA has something similar - hence prop 65. Anything and everything has lurking dangers. In an attempt to be perfect, CA is strangling the day to day lives of average folks. And CA likes to export it’s ideas to the rest of the country.
California is a big state with many climate zones. It’s 35 where I am right now in the Bay Area, inland of the Bay. We get frost frequently in the winter. San Francisco is 46 right now. Put a sweater on doesn’t work for every Californian. My neighbor for example is older and colder. I’m not telling her to just put a sweater on (I tell my kid that 
)
I cooked my “2-ingredient banana-egg” pancakes this AM, without burning them as usual, and whatever you want to call “the stuff,” I’ll call it smoke and vapors, that’s exiting into the overhead vent above is not what I want to breathe into my lungs.
That’s the smoke and vapors from your cooking oil, if heated above its smoke and vapor points, regardless of whether your stove uses electricity, gas or by electromagnetic induction. To reduce smoke and vapors, you can use a cooking oil with higher smoke and/or vapor point, and keep the cooking temperature below those points.
Oh, it’s not only those harmful pollutants that I don’t want to breathe, but it’s also the carbon monoxide, formaldehyde and other harmful pollutants that gas stoves put into the air, which are toxic.
I’m not proposing one for everyone (or even myself), but my off-grid lad and his wife use a biodigestor to get gas to cook with - and they cook outside (I think - I’ll know more after we visit them soon). It’s intriguing to me what people come up with when they’re motivated to do so.
I’m adding a link, but I don’t know if they use the same system or not. I just googled to get a link:
They also cook some things via solar, but mainly small things or heating water for tea/coffee. They got us a solar cooker from GoSun because it’s my absolutely favorite way to cook sweet potatoes now. I haven’t ventured out to do more with it, but they do.
All of which burn… and if you use your stove hood while you are cooking, you are not exposed to any of that. Note that the study everyone cites has been limited to a handful of stove air samples at the gas inlet. Not exposure while cooking.
What we need to require is not a ban on stoves but adequate ventilation. In every freaking apartment. I have seen too many where air just recirculates through a filter. That is a no go for me.
ETA: I’m a chemist. I worked with stuff a small whiff of which can easily kill. Handling the stuff in a properly functioning hood is safe - ventilation matters.
So I can just breathe deeply when I’m around my gas stove cooking and not have any harmful pollutants enter my lungs? Cool. I guess I worry too much.
Yes. If you are using your properly installed hood adequately sized for your stove type.
Heck, San Francisco allows distribution of clean needles and a safe place to shoot up drugs, but you can’t get a Happy Meal because the city deems them unhealthy. That’s the kind of logic you so often find here in California.
SF allows parents to give their young kids clean needles and drugs, but won’t let them give their kids Happy Meals?
Or are you saying a lot of adults wanted to buy Happy Meals?
Yup. I am saved from the environmental horrors of a straw while drinking my liquid from a rapidly dripping and disintegrating ‘environmentally friendly’ cup. This. While overlooking the washed out homeless encampment which has caused several local waterways to have dangerously high level of human poo. Not to mention the colorful trash lining the embankments.
But…at least there are no straws in those creeks.
Our attempts to be so environmentally friendly led to sealed buildings. Those where there is no opportunity for outside fresh air. Instead, lots of HVAC usage and recycled ickies.
SF banned Happy Meals because they were unhealthy for children. Nobody can get a Happy Meal in SF.
SF allows private organizations to run needle exchange and distribution programs in the city. The city also provides what it calls safe injection sites so addicts can shoot up. The safe injection site near the SF Civic Center that I used to walk by had drug users shooting up and passing out on the sidewalks just outside the safe injection center. I personally think it enables drug use more than helping to stop it. I don’t know if they check someone’s age when they’re distributing needles or using safe injection sites.
I also think it’s ridiculous that SF bans the sale of vaping items for health reasons, while treating marijuana like a medical godsend and allows dispensaries all over the place.
I guess we’re straying from gas stoves, but these examples are meant to show how logically inconsistent California state and local governments are when it comes to decision making. And that includes decisions on things like gas appliances.
They don’t. A local mom agrees with your assertion that SF aides drug use and addiction. Her underage son got involved in the using lifestyle and lives in the streets of SF. He’s of age now snd she goes into SF every week to try to find him, and hopes every week that she’ll find him alive.
I go to the SF symphony often and know of the area you talk about. One time I couldn’t take my son to a show because he didn’t have a Covid booster (he was 16 at the time). But outside on the street I saw a young man about his age shoot up in squalid conditions. I don’t know how City leaders live with the cognitive dissonance of their policies. And the condition on the streets are absolutely inhumane snd horrifying, there’s nothing compassionate about it. Rant over.
Aunties in the Old Country had these. Their kids have replaced them with modern appliances. While we were visiting we stopped at a home appliance store just for fun. These are still being sold (updated models of course) in Germany. And as per the sales person…there was a long wait since they were in huge demand.
Perfect…burns wood - an ultimately renewable source. Heats the house while cooking the dinner. With the water reservoir you also reduce you need to heat water just for the purpose of have the comfort of warm water. here you heat it because you want to eat and it’s a nice side benefit.
