Why your home gas connection is under threat

Australians have blasted government plans to move them off natural gas, with a big majority saying they want to keep the little blue flame. Vote, have your say.

Government plans to wean consumers off natural gas in the home are set to face a massive hurdle, with respondents to a News Corp poll showing a clear preference for the little blue flame.

More than 1700 readers had responded to the online poll as of 10am AEDT Monday, with a huge majority of 77 per cent indicating that a home gas connection was an absolute must for them.

Just 14 per cent said a home gas connection wasn’t essential, and nine per cent were unsure.

The rate of support for gas is actually greater than the proportion of homes that have a gas connection in some states.

A report from 2021 by Energy Networks Australia showed Victoria, the ACT and WA have high rates of gas connectivity (at 76, 73 and 68 per cent respectively), but in SA just 56 per cent of homes have gas, in NSW the ratio is 43 per cent, in Queensland it is 10 per cent and in Tasmania it is 5 per cent.

Some readers expressed outrage over the idea that governments might seek to deprive them of choice when it comes to their home energy needs.

“I am tired of green folk telling me what to do,” one commenter posted, reflecting the thoughts of many.

In a second poll asking readers how concerned they were about the health impacts of gas in the home, 83 per cent of respondents said they were “not at all concerned”.

Six per cent said they were “somewhat concerned”, seven per cent said they were “very concerned” and four per cent said they were unsure or would like to know more.

Natural gas has been pumped into Aussie homes as far back as 1837, and for most of the 186 years since, it’s been completely welcome and uncontroversial, providing hot showers, warmth on winter nights, and quick and efficient cooking.

Yet suddenly, there are moves to strip it out.

While about 18 per cent of Australia’s electricity supply currently comes from gas, it is the direct home connection – the little blue flame – that some want to extinguish.

The Victorian and ACT governments have both announced aggressive plans to phase out direct home connections to gas, while last year the Committee for Sydney called for the NSW government to follow suit. The moves come as global and local prices for the commodity go sky-high, driven in large part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. By mid last year, the spot price for gas on the Australian east coast was up 246 per cent in a year, according to the Australian Energy Marker Operator.

Cooking with gas. But for how much longer?

Victoria and the ACT are not mucking around with their plans to quit gas. Canberra residents can access zero interest loans to electrify their homes, and from this year, suburban infill developments will not be connected to the pipeline network. Victoria is taking gas out of schools and hospitals, and will soon dump incentives for home gas appliances. In October Dan Andrews amped up the campaign further, saying Victoria – currently home to more gas connections than any other state – would aim for 95 per cent renewable energy by 2035, a move that would shift fossil fuels such as gas to the absolute margins.

The move away from gas gained further momentum in November, when property companies Lendlease and the CTP group announced they would phase out gas kitchens in new builds by the end of the decade. They were backed by celebrity chefs including Neil Perry, Darren Robertson and Palisa Anderson, who spoke about their own plans to switch to all-electric cooking.

Critics say gas in the home is expensive, unhealthy, creates massive greenhouse emissions and is ultimately incompatible with any attempt to get to net zero.

At last year’s Clean Energy Summit in Sydney, senior ACT environment bureaucrat Geoffrey Rutledge told attendees that home gas was “not in a death spiral yet … but it will be soon”.

But if there is a war against home gas, the industry says it is one it will win.

Brett Heffernan is Chief Executive Office for Gas Energy Australia. Picture: Supplied

“The war on gas is a losing battle,” Gas Energy Australia CEO Brett Heffernan said.

“Without gas, the lights go out. With coal-fired power shutting down around us, gas is, and will continue to be, essential in securing efficient, reliable and affordable energy supply.”

Australian Pipelines and Gas Association CEO Steve Davies said the mass switching from gas to electricity for home energy needs would increase pressures on the transmission grid, and ultimately force energy prices up for the consumer. This is a reality the advocates of electrification “conveniently ignore,” he said.

“The first houses to shift to electric cooking and heating can be absorbed by the existing

electricity system easily. Millions of houses cannot,” Mr Davies said.

But others warn gas prices will also go up as more consumers opt for electric appliances instead.

Mr Rutledge said as many as 13,000 Canberra residents had turned off their gas connection just in the past few years, and if the trend continued, it would increase costs for the remaining users.

“(These people) have turned of their gas connection … (but) the meter continues to be maintained, and that pipeline continues to be maintained, and as they are not a gas user they are paying nothing for that,” he said.

“Over time if that continues … the fixed costs of using the full network are going to have to be funnelled to fewer and fewer customers. If gas users drop by 30 per cent, the fixed costs have to be absorbed by 30 per cent fewer consumers, and therefore their gas bills will go up.”

As the prices go up, that will in turn drive more users away from home gas, Mr Rutledge said.

Dr Carl Tidemann, a senior researcher in climate solutions at the Climate Council.

But quitting the network is a shortsighted strategy, because gas blends will likely change over time, Mr Heffernan said. Hydrogen-blended gas is currently being trialled in some Adelaide suburbs, and biomethane is being injected into the gas network in southeastern Sydney as a pilot project.

“The flame isn’t going out; it’s turning green,” Mr Heffernan said.

“We’ve got 40,000 kilometres of pipe, and 20 million cylinders in circulation; why wouldn’t you want to use it?,” he said.

“The question I’ve put to ministers and shadow ministers is, if we change the nature of the gas so that it’s renewable and net zero, and what comes out the other end is just as reliable and it’s net zero, what’s the problem? And universally they’ve said well there isn’t a problem.”

But Dr Carl Tidemann from the Climate Council said there was an issue: cost.

“The gas industry are always very quick to highlight the potential upgrades to the electricity network that might be needed to fully electrify our heating and cooking appliances. What they always fail to mention are the upgrades to the gas network and complete replacement of appliances that will definitely be necessary if we are to believe their promises to use hydrogen to fuel home appliances,” he said.

Three Blue Ducks chef Darren Robertson is part of the Global Cooksafe Coalition, which encourages people to switch from gas to electric cooking in their home kitchens. Picture: Bruno Stefani

The Climate Council has called for federal and state governments to follow the ACT’s lead and offer low or zero-interest loans to help homeowners with the upfront costs of buying reverse cycle air conditioners, water heaters and cooktops.

Both sides of the debate seem to agree on perhaps one thing: that the fight over the future of gas in the home will ultimately be fought in the kitchen.

Indeed, food and the little blue flame seem so intertwined that the phrase “cooking with gas” is a euphemism for something that functions with perfect efficacy.

But celebrity chef Darren Robertson said electric stovetop cooking had come a long way.

“We all used those really daggy electric stoves in the ’90s, when you’d try and cook a steak but it would boil in the pan. But now with induction cooking, the product is certainly on par with cooking with gas,” he said.

Mr Robertson said he was not out to “gas shame” anyone, but the switch to electricity in the kitchen was not unlike the switch taking place in our garages.

Thai chef Palisa Anderson has also urged Aussies to switch to electric cooking at home. Picture: Tim Hunter

“At The Farm in Byron Bay we put in an electric vehicle charging station, and it pretty much sat dormant for about a year,” he said. “But just seeing the change in two or three years, now there’s queues, because there’s obviously a lot more people with electric cars. I think it’s the same with this.”

Back in Canberra, Mr Rutledge said the ACT government ran electric cooking classes when it opened up a new gas-free estate in Jinanderra to help ease concerns.

“We had a lot of people committed to gas who were literally saying they would not purchase in an all-electric home,” he said. “But we ran the cooking classes and there’s been zero complaints.

“Everyone’s very primal about cooking with gas; it’s very emotional. But once you swap out your space heating, and you’ve still got your $600 [gas] service charge per annum, suddenly you’re less emotional about your wok burner. That’s an expensive wok burner,” Mr Rutledge said.

Originally published as Why your home gas connection is under threat