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Marcos Ramos hasn’t been able to cook a full meal at home in nearly four years, after a gas leak resulted in a lengthy supply cut off for his New York City apartment building.

Now, though, Ramos will be able to cook again thanks to a technology that is gradually advancing in the US after being embroiled in an unlikely culture war – the electric induction stove.

Over two days last month people in 15 co-op apartments in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan who have had to rely on portable hot plates and microwaves for meal preparation were fitted with new induction stoves via a scheme supported by state and city governments, along with non-profit groups.

“I’m excited, I’m going to make some lasagne, a whole pasture-raised chicken, things I couldn’t fit on the hot plate before,” said Ramos, a health coach and one of the residents, as he gazed at his new stove.

“It’s been so frustrating to live like this until now. I now think everything should be electric. If you’re minimizing risk with the gas, the fire, then environmentally, health-wise, it makes sense. It’s logical.”

The project is a prelude to a much larger task for Copper, the company that supplied these induction stoves and is now working on a $32m pilot to replace gas stoves in 10,000 apartments across the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) system – the largest public housing network in the US. An initial trial in 100 of these apartments should start early next year.

Advocates claim the inroads induction stoves are making in New York, following a similar move made to install the stoves in low-income housing in California, demonstrate a viable alternative to gas, which has jumped in price amid the Iran war. Gas also gives off pollution harmful to the health of residents and worsens the climate crisis.

Residential energy use, including gas for cooking, accounts for around a fifth of US greenhouse gas emissions. Nitrogen dioxide wafting from gas’s blue flame can also exacerbate respiratory and heart problems, with exposure most severe in small apartments with poor ventilation. These indoor toxins are not regulated, unlike outdoor air pollution, despite potentially being up to five times as extreme.

“It’s unfortunate that we often have cleaner air outside than we do in our own homes, there’s been a lack of focus on the indoor environment,” said Misbath Daouda, a scientist at UC Berkeley. She led a 2024 study that found people who replaced their gas stoves with electric alternatives were exposed to less than half the amount of nitrogen dioxide emissions.

“Removing gas stoves reduces that pollution dramatically,” Daouda added. “That is a win-win situation because it addresses climate goals as well as health goals. The technology is also just more efficient too – every single person in our study group preferred the electric induction stoves.”

Just 3% of US homes currently have induction stoves – which use magnetic fields to heat cookware directly – but efforts to expand their use have been fought by the gas industry and also Republican politicians who claimed, incorrectly, that then-president, Joe Biden, wanted to ban gas stoves.

A Biden-era federal subsidy that covered as much as a third of the cost of a stove has also been dismantled by Republican lawmakers.

“That transition has definitely slowed down,” said Daouda. “It’s unfortunate that this administration has removed help for low-income households to gain access to this technology.”

But some states, including New York, California, Hawaii, Georgia and North Carolina, are now stepping into this void by crafting rebate programs that encourage take-up of induction stoves. Advocates hope that further states will follow suit. “The portrayal of electric stoves hasn’t helped until now, but I think things are changing,” said Daouda.

For New York, a city constantly grappling with creaking infrastructure, there is a cost imperative beyond the public health benefits. While the kind of Copper stove installed in the Washington Heights apartments is priced at $6,000 each, this is still less than the total cost of gas pipe or electrical upgrades required for an alternative.

Tenants in Ramos’ building, many of them elderly and on fixed incomes, would’ve had to collectively pay around $200,000 to fix the aging gas pipes, whereas the electric stoves are able to plug directly into existing 120-volt power points – in all, the project cost around $90,000.

“The production and piloting of affordable, energy-efficient induction stoves will alleviate the amount of service outages and the need for costly capital investments caused by the deterioration of aging gas plumbing infrastructure in our properties,” said a NYCHA spokesman.

Our fossil fuel age has brought heating and lighting but also conflict, price surges and explosions. Reina Feliz, one of the Washington Heights residents with a new induction stove, said she is “glad there won’t be risks from the gas anymore”. She added, via an interpreter (she, like many people here, has Dominican Republic heritage): “We have to cook, we have to eat. But it will be better for our health.”

Cooking is a cultural, as well as an economic, act,, and the gas industry – which came up with the term “cooking on gas” – has had a head start in portraying gas as a better way to heat food. Some chefs have marveled at the speed and efficiency of induction stoves, but many people in the US will still need to be won over to electric.

“I was used to gas. I wasn’t sure about electric,” said Hilda Jimenez, another resident. “But I’m OK with it now I have this,” she added, pointing to the hefty stove that was being hauled into her kitchen. “I couldn’t cook turkey here. Thanksgiving was no good. I had to go to my son or my daughter in Florida, but now I can have it here.”

Josh Land, co-founder of Copper, said that previous iterations of electric coil stoves may have been underwhelming to consumers but superior induction stove options, when coupled with city and state climate mandates, should help accelerate uptake for a range of cleaner appliances across the US.

“Once people can accept having an electric stove that’s good and functional in the kitchen, they’ll be like, ‘Oh, we can do an electric dryer using electric water heater, electric heater,’” said Land, who is a former chef.

“You use a stove every day, if that’s electric and that works well then I think people will accept the whole house going that way.”

• The Guardian receives support for visual climate coverage from the Outrider Foundation. The Guardian’s coverage is editorially independent