This one is somewhat minor, but if you like to grill and use charcoal then this might be for you. I finally got around to trying a charcoal chimney starter rather than charcoal lighter fluid. It worked well. A few scraps of paper and it fired right up, heating the coals more rapidly than lighter fluid. For some reason the manufacturer painted the device. Of course the paint blistered and oxidized on the first use. I don't see why it needed paint in the first place. We like charcoal grilling for some things primarily for flavor/texture. (Throw some more shrimp on the barbie!) While the charcoal itself is renewable and locally produced, once you consider transportation, packaging, and emissions...it is probably not so green. But it backs out some coal fired electricity. Grilling isn't a money saver though. The chimney starter will save us some money on charcoal ligher fluid, and the resulting flavor is cleaner as well. We grill about once/week on average throughout the year. The negative is that some of the bottom coals burn out a bit soon so the peak temperature for actual grilling is probably sustained for a shorter time and is more intense. This might not work as well for ribs and other longer cooking items. Also, despite the presence of a radiation blocking plate between the chimney and wooden handle, the starter still required a grill glove for the handle once the coals were hot.
I've wondered about that, especially this time of year in a household with air conditioning. Assuming that what is grilled would otherwise be baked or broiled, how much harder does the AC have to work to offset the added heat radiated from an oven? How about propane grilling? I do more of that than charcoal for convenience and cost (though I too prefer the flavor of charcoal). I doubt anyone can answer with precision, but maybe you or others are willing to speculate and make educated guesses.
For an even better more "green" flavor, use all natural lump charcoal instead of briquet's. Several different brands easily available, but Royal Oaks from Walmart is about best buy. Natural lump contains no additives. It's just pure charcoaled wood pieces. Briquet's contain additives such as mineral coal, lime, and nitrates.
I wish I could Kill-a-watt the oven's 220V. My best guess is that for short grilling time equivalents at least 1 kwh would be used by the oven (including pre-heat), perhaps as much as 2 kwh. But this is just a guess based on some website numbers I came across for cooking in general. The air conditioning impact can be calculated from the oven power consumption using the AC's coefficient of performance (COP). COP = SEER / 3.413. AC power use to remove added electrical heat = oven kwh / COP. (This same approach can be applied to lighting or other loads inside the home. Doesn't work as well for an electric dryer that exhausts outside--that one would take some guesswork.) For my AC the added load would be about 0.37 - 0.74 kwh. So all in the grilling might save around 1.4 to 2.7 kwh of electric for me. I don't do any propane grilling but I do have a propane burner that I use outside with my wok about once/week (Spring/Summer/Fall) for some asian and indian dishes. It didn't appear that the wok would work on the ceramic stove top so I bought a burner. I seem to averaging about ~.3 lb propane/meal--probably over half of that is from boiling water in the wok to clean it each time.
