January 18, 2018

expert reaction to study looking at CO2 emissions of microwave ovens

The first comprehensive study of the environmental impacts of microwaves is published in Science of the Total Environment.

Prof. David Reay, Professor of Carbon Management, University of Edinburgh, said:

“To say microwave ovens are ‘as bad for the environment as cars’ is an apples to oranges comparison, because one (the microwaves) is for a full life-cycle assessment and the other (cars) is just their direct emissions from being driven.  The statement ‘Microwaves could be as bad for the environment as cars suggests new research’ is completely incorrect in my view.  The authors in the paper do not make this rather hyperbolic comparison at all.

“Yes, there are a lot of microwaves in the EU, and yes they use electricity.  But their emissions are dwarfed by those from cars – there are around 30 million cars in the UK alone and these emit way more than all the emission from microwaves in the EU.  Latest data show that passenger cars in the UK emitted 69 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2015.  This is ten times the amount this new microwave oven study estimates for annual emissions for all the microwave ovens in the whole of the EU.

“In sum, the paper does a decent job of estimating life-cycle emissions of microwaves, but to say “Microwaves could be as bad for the environment as cars suggests new research”, as the press release does, is very misleading in my view.”

* ‘Environmental assessment of microwaves and the effect of European energy efficiency and waste management legislation’ by Alejandro Gallego-Schmid et al. published in Science of the Total Environment on Thursday 18 January 2018. 

Declared interests

None received.