Commercial kitchens are one of the most challenging spaces to electrify, but we need to take on this challenge in order to decarbonize restaurants, hotels, schools, hospitals, and other buildings with commercial kitchens. Is another green certification program the answer?

In this episode, Chefs Christopher Galarza and Duke Gastiger are back to dive into EcoChef—the first electric kitchen rating system and certification program with the goal to standardize how commercial kitchens are designed, built, and operated. They discuss the origin story of EcoChef, the structure of the program, the pilot project with Duke’s RE Farm Café, and why commercial kitchens need a dedicated certification program for electrification.

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Remember when gas stoves became a political issue last year? While all that public debate was happening, there were chefs around the world embracing the concept of all-electric kitchens and getting past the learning curve to induction cooking.

We don’t hear about gas stoves in the news as much as we used to, but kitchen electrification will always be a hot topic here at Buildings + Beyond! In this episode, we invited Chef Christopher Galarza back to the podcast to talk about the progress being made to transform more commercial kitchens into efficient, safe, and climate-friendly spaces. Chris brought Duke Gastiger, who built a net zero, all-electric commercial kitchen at his farm restaurant, to join the conversation.

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“Net zero” can mean a lot of different things depending on what you choose to measure – zero energy usage, zero carbon emitted, zero lifecycle impact, etc.

At Steven Winter Associates, Inc. (SWA), we work with clients who are approaching net zero from different angles: driven by institutional goals, climate concerns, marketing campaigns, and connecting with municipal emissions targets. One thing we see over and over is that super high performance is difficult to achieve, but with a key simplification – there are not many ways to do it. All roads may lead to Rome but the closer you get, the fewer roads there are to take.

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