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At a recent city council meeting in Palo Alto, California, Erin Pei stepped up to the podium. Clad in an Arctic Circle sweatshirt, the 11th grader presented hair-raising facts about the health impacts of gas stoves and other appliances that burn fossil fuels.
The Bay Area Air District has found that gas water heaters and furnaces cause premature deaths and create hundreds of millions of dollars in health costs in the region each year. A peer-reviewed meta-analysis found that children living in homes with gas stoves face up to a 42% increased risk of asthma. And according to the Public Health Law Center, cooking with gas releases similar pollutants to smoking cigarettes, including nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and the carcinogens benzene and formaldehyde.
“The city has an obligation to alert residents to these dangers,” Pei said.
Pei, who attends Henry M. Gunn High School, is an intern with the student-centered environmental and public health task force named Induction Rocks — a nod to the high-tech electric alternative to gas cooking. Sven Thesen, co-founder of the EV think tank National Charging Access Coalition and a Palo Alto resident, created the group last fall. He co-leads it with climate activist Avroh Shah, a junior at Palo Alto High School. Now, about a dozen middle and high school students in the Silicon Valley city volunteer or get paid $20 per hour as interns in the group.
In recent months, Induction Rocks has been pushing Palo Alto to hasten its transition to clean electric appliances — a move that supports the city’s goal to reduce planet-warming emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2030. The students have met with individual city leaders, participated in a December policy workshop, and provided a regular drumbeat of public comments on the health risks of gas appliances at council meetings.
Induction Rocks has focused on swapping out gas stoves in particular to combat decades of industry marketing that has hooked people on the appliances, Thesen said. In California, 70% of households used gas to cook in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration — more than in any other state.
Gas stoves make up a relatively small slice of carbon emissions, but among appliances, they’re typically one of the biggest source of indoor air pollution. Local governments often don’t require them to vent outdoors, like they do other combustion equipment.
Patrick Burt, a former mayor of Palo Alto and current city council member, said the group’s advocacy has already spurred the city to reconsider how it talks about home electrification. The students ​“probably had a decisive impact in convincing our staff and our city council to make the health [effects] as important in our communications and our programs as the environmental impacts,” Burt noted.
Explaining the health harms of gas stoves could nudge households to finally break up with fossil fuels, Burt said.
“What we’ve seen is that the vast majority of people don’t know this information,” he said. ​“And when they do, they have a much stronger reaction and motivation to make changes than with just the environmental reasons.”
Last month, Induction Rocks saw a major win when the city launched rebates for those who replace gas stoves with induction ones as part of its 2026–2027 climate action plan. The students hope that the rebates will lower the barrier to entry for induction cooking, especially for the area’s low-income residents, who can receive $100 off a portable cooktop and $1,000 off a range. Others can get $50 and $500 off those items, respectively.
The incentives make induction cost-competitive. Wirecutter’s highest-rated induction range costs $1,499; the top gas equivalent, $849.
As soon as April 22, Earth Day, Palo Alto plans to launch a library lending program for portable induction cooktops to make it easy for people to try out the tech, Burt said.
The climate action committee has also directed the city’s staff to ​“really elevate the health impacts in all of our communications” in the coming months.
That’s already starting to happen. A recent mailer on Palo Alto’s Electrify My Home program, which helps people ditch gas appliances, reads: ​“Clean energy and air. Community health.”
I caught up with a few members of Induction Rocks on a recent Saturday to hear about what drives them and their approach. They all gravitate toward science, tech, engineering, and mathematics, and hope to pursue careers in those fields. Every month, the group nerds out at Thesen’s home for dinner and climate-related talks.
Kanami Taniguchi, a junior at Palo Alto Middle College High School, describes herself as introverted. But she loves being in a group of like-minded people learning together about the environmental science and the chemistry of gas-stove pollution, rather than studying it on her own, she said.
The students are also fully aware of the worsening climate crisis. ​“I’ve been really scared about what will happen [to] my future with climate change,” said Sarah Seeger, an eighth grader at Ellen Fletcher Middle School. ​“It’s just really terrifying to me.”
Seeger’s family already has an induction cooktop. During a December city council meeting, amid a presentation about the health imperatives of ditching gas, she showed off a side benefit of the appliance: Her cats can traipse across it. Because the stove cools quickly, ​“I don’t have to worry about their paws getting burned,” she said.
“And most importantly, I don’t need to worry about breathing in these harmful gases like benzene and oxides of nitrogen that I would be breathing in if I had a natural gas stove,” Seeger told the council.
Prisha Goel, a junior at Palo Alto Middle College High School, told me that the group’s strategy hinges on sharing science with the public, rather than dictating behavior. ​“We’re not telling people that they have to switch,” she said. ​“We’re giving them information about what a gas stove might be doing to you, even though you’re not aware of it.”
Utsav Gupta, who serves on the city’s Utilities Advisory Commission and founded the AI-and-spatial-computing startup Filarion, called the students ​“an incredible group.”
“It’s amazing to me, their level of advocacy at such a young age, educating and driving forward this issue,” he said. Their activism has galvanized Gupta to raise the health risks of gas stoves with his fellow commissioners, who are advising the city in its plans to decommission the gas system.
The group has also affected Gupta personally, causing him to realize that he and his partner should replace their gas stove with induction. For now, they’re opening the windows when they cook in order to get more ventilation.
“I’m way more aware of the risks,” he said, ​“thanks to these students.”
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