furnace in his basement, like many homes in Chicago. Five days after a winter snowfall, the snow was covered with a visible black film of dust from coal furnaces. Our younger generation does not know the original reason for “spring cleaning.” Every spring, homeowners would wash their inside walls to remove coal dust.
Natural gas and propane are clean-burning fuels that emit no harmful pollutants when burned. When gas heating is substituted for coal or wood heating, indoor particulate pollution isheating and cooking source in Europe, providing 83% of heat energy in the Netherlands and 78% in the United Kingdom. But there are still 70 million wood stoves in Europe.that 2 billion people in developing nations still cook using open fires or inefficient stoves fueled by kerosene, biomass , and coal.
In fact, gas has become the primary fuel for generating electricity in developed nations over the last three decades. Natural gasfrom 12.6% of U.S. electricity generation in 1990 to 43.1% in 2023. By 2022, gas had become the leading fuel for electricThe combination of rising gas use to generate electricity, the use of scrubbers on coal plants, and the reduction in vehicle pollution has produced vastly improved air quality in recent decades.
Nevertheless, President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and other leaders have called for a net-zero electric grid by 2035. Twenty-three states now have net-zero electricity targets by 2050. Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, totaling about half of Europe’s electricity, haveA war rages in Europe over the elimination of gas appliances. The governments of Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K.