Running costs
Gas waste hides because each unit is cheap and nobody meters the quiet hours. Almost all of it burns when nothing is cooking - which is why the bill can fall a long way before service feels a thing.
Running costs
Business gas is running at roughly 6.5p to 9p per kWh in 2026, a fraction of the 22p to 30p most kitchens pay for electricity, which is exactly why gas waste hides so well: each wasted kWh is cheap enough that nobody chases it, and there are hundreds of thousands of them. The good news is that cutting the gas bill is a sequencing problem, not a sacrifice. None of the steps below slows a single ticket.
Why service pace survives
The instinctive objection to every energy programme is speed: chefs assume a cheaper kitchen is a slower one. The meter data says otherwise. Almost all recoverable gas spend sits in hours when nothing is being cooked - early ignition, idle holding, appliances left live through the afternoon lull - or in plant inefficiency the brigade never sees. Cutting it changes nothing at the pass. If anything the discipline helps, because a line that lights to a plan is a line that preps to one.
Hot water deserves its own line in the audit, because it burns gas around the clock. A calorifier sized for the busiest Saturday keeps a full tank hot through every quiet Tuesday; poorly lagged pipe runs shed that heat into corridors nobody wanted warming, and scale on heat exchange surfaces makes the burner work longer for the same tap temperature. None of that touches service either - the wash-up gets the same water, the bill just stops paying for the losses on the way there.
There is also a design horizon worth keeping in view. The gap between gas and electric unit prices is wide, but induction transfers far more of each kWh into the pan than an open burner does, and it throws far less heat into the room, which the ventilation then has to remove. When a refit is on the table, the gas versus induction decision deserves real arithmetic rather than loyalty, and the layout question of where gas, extraction and the interlock meet is cheaper to answer on paper than in steel.
The numbers that frame the plan
None of these numbers argues for cooking differently. They argue for lighting later, holding smarter, servicing on schedule and reading the meter weekly. The fastest kitchens already run that way; the discipline that keeps tickets moving is the same discipline that keeps burners honest. And because frying kit spends roughly three quarters of its life at idle, the same audit usually finds the electric side of the bill hiding an identical story.
Questions
Most commercial kitchens are paying in the region of 6.5p to 9p per kWh for gas in 2026, with the Climate Change Levy adding 0.801p per kWh on top, against roughly 22p to 30p per kWh for business electricity. Exact rates turn on volume, contract length, credit and region.
Yes, because almost all recoverable gas spend sits outside cooking: early ignition, idle burners through quiet spells, unserviced kit and mismatched appliances. UK metering work attributes around 70% of available kitchen energy savings to behaviour alone. Fixing those changes nothing at the pass.
Not automatically. Gas remains far cheaper per kWh, while induction turns more of each unit into cooking and less into room heat. The honest comparison belongs in a refit appraisal, where equipment life, ventilation load and unit prices can be weighed together rather than mid-contract.
BS 6173 requires installations since 2001 to cut the gas supply when extract ventilation cannot be proven, and the fan must be proven again before the gas restores. It is a safety system, but it also ties the condition of your extraction directly to whether you can cook at all.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
Grease-choked extraction makes the room hotter and every appliance work harder. TR19 Grease cleaning restores design airflow, with the certificate for your records.