Environmental impact of the main household cooking systems—A survey

Abstract

The food cooking energy may represent the primary hotspot in the cradle-to-grave life cycle of several foods and drinks. It is mainly affected by the type of food and its cookery method, cooking appliance and the fuel selected as well as the number of portions to be cooked. The primary aim of this survey was to demonstrate the basic characteristics of the main cooking methods, appliances, and fuels as well as energy required for some key foods. The secondary aim was to assess the environmental impacts of a generic cooking system as a function of few household cookers fueled by different fuels (i.e., firewood, charcoal, coal, natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, kerosene and biogas) and electricity in the Italian scenario by using the ReCiPe 2016 and product environmental footprint (PEF) standard methods and Ecoinvent v. 3.7 database. A functional unit equal to per capita useful energy delivered to the pot for cooking (1.41 gigajoule [GJ]) in 27 European Union countries in 2019 was used as the basis of comparison. The use of natural gas resulted in minimum impact in nine of the 18 mid-point impact categories of ReCiPe 2016 method and two damage categories (human health and ecosystem quality) with a minimum overall weighted damage score (OWDSR) of ~5 Pt. Thus, such a cookstove appeared to be more apt to minimize both indoor and outdoor air pollution. Even if the electric cookstove yielded a greater OWDSR (8.6 Pt) because the Italian electricity grid mix was mainly based on fossil sources, it was possible to forecast that new-generation, smart cooktops driven by hydro- and wind-power electricity would minimize OWDSR to as low as 0.9 and 1.4 Pt, respectively, thus not only avoiding the consumption of any fossil energy source but also improving people’s health.