What's better for the environment, Charcoal or Propane barbecue?

Question

What's better for the environment, Charcoal or Propane barbecue?

Answer 1

Don is right.  Propane burns clean whereas charcoal pollutes the air.

2 thumbs up to Don

Answer 2

I would use Propane. I don't care how many people say it, but wood is not a renewable resource. You have to grow trees in the ground, and that takes nutrients from the soil, which causes erosion.

I know some environmental people that switch their gas cars to propane, saying it's a cleaner fuel.

Answer 3

Natural gas has a formula close to CH4 which gets a lot of its heat from burning the hydrogen.

By contrast Charcoal has almost pure carbon, so that all of its heat comes from converting carbon to carbon dioxide.

However, charcoal is from wood, a renewable resource. The charcoal does have a lot of unwelcome chemicals of combustion.

It would be better to put the charcoal into the ground as a soil amendment, and  use the wood gas, a close analog of natural gas to fire the barbecue.

Answer 4

Charcoal.  Propane combusts and creates water which can never add flavor to any meat.