“Cowardly decision:” Victorian Labor flinches on fossil exit, says gas cooktops can stay

A ban on new gas cooktops is off the table in Victoria, with the state government backing away from the introduction of across-the-board restrictions on all new gas appliances in the state’s homes.

The Gas Substitution Roadmap bans gas from new homes in the state and is aiming to phase it out of existing homes by requiring households to replace old gas appliances with efficient electric alternatives – albeit with the help of rebates.

But today the state government confirmed that gas cooktops won’t be part of that equation, either in residential or commercial kitchens.

“I’m going to be really clear today … that Victorians can continue to keep cooking with gas,” state premier Jacinta Allen told reporters on Monday.

“This is important because we’ve listened to Victorians and they’ve asked for this certainty to be provided, and we’re providing that today.

“It also gives us the opportunity to have conversation with the Victorian community about our future energy mix and our future energy needs.”

At the same time, the government is introducing legislation to turn old offshore gas reservoirs into storage sites, allowing new gas to be kept as a security measure in underground locations still connected to the state’s gas network.

Victoria announced its shift away from gas in July last year, when the then-Daniel Andrews government banned gas connections to new homes and businesses from 1 January 2024.

It supported the move with a $10 million Residential Electrification Grants fund to help volume home builders and others to instead install solar panels, electric hot water systems and heat pumps.

Also in the kitty was $1 million for construction industry training in addition to Solar Victoria’s $11 million upskilling program for plumbers and electricians.

Getting off gas is a move with plenty of upside for Victoria, the state for which the Australian Energy Market Operator is forecasting structural gas shortages by 2028 and warned in June of snap shortages during a cold snap.

Last year, an Environment Victoria report found that households in the state could expect to pay around $716 on gas heating during June, July and August.

Efficient electric heaters, such as heat pumps, slashed that to $169 – a 75 per cent reduction.

Backflip on gas?

The “clarification” exempting gas cooktops from any government-mandated phaseout has been pounced upon as a policy backflip – and is raising concerns that gas hot water systems and heating might also be let off the hook.

This seems unlikely, with various policy incentives including the state’s Solar Homes program offering rebates of up to $1,000 on the cost of installing electric hot water systems and for switching out gas heating for reverse cycle air-conditioning units.

The government’s blanket ban on gas connections to new-build homes remains intact, as do the huge financial savings that households can make by getting off gas and going all-electric.

Amandine Denis-Ryan, the CEO of IEEFA Australia, says gas hot water and heating systems represent 98 per cent of residential gas use in Victoria and are “the right appliances to prioritise.” They also make up the vast bulk of financial savings associated with electrification.

“There are several large differences between gas cooktops and other gas-based appliances,” , Denis-Ryan tells One Step Off The Grid.

“Gas cooktops consume very little gas, they are less financially attractive to shift to electricity and they can be powered by bottled gas.

“Our research shows that if gas heating and water heating appliances were required to be replaced with efficient electric alternatives at their end of life, the average Victorian home could save $1,200 a year on their energy bills.

“The additional benefit of electrifying gas cooktops is to avoid the annual fixed charge that consumers pay to maintain a gas connection.

“Increasingly, consumers are also choosing to switch away from gas cooktops for health reasons, with 12% of childhood asthma in Australia attributed to exposure to gas cooktops.”

Nevertheless, Allen’s pointed watering down of the Gas Substitution Roadmap does look awfully like a concession to the powerful gas lobby, allowing them to keep their collective foot in the door of homes in Victoria – the state with by far the biggest amount of residential gas use in Australia.

“This is a cowardly, political decision that denies basic climate science,” the leader of the Victorian Greens Ellen Sandell said on Monday.

“Instead of listening to climate science and the experts, Labor is pandering to the ring-wing conservatives and fossil fuel lobby groups.

“We should be focusing on supporting people to move to electric cooking and heating, which works just as well and is a lot cheaper and cleaner.”

“The army of gas-linked lobbyists has won the day over the health and future of Victorians,” said Belinda Noble, founder of Comms Declare.

“The concerted lobbying effort, as well as targeted ad campaigns against politicians, has shown we need to get fossil fuel interests out of politics and out of the media before they destroy the Australian environment and lifestyle we love.”

Rewiring Australia says the exclusion of gas cooktops from the roadmap is more of a “temporary delay” than a fundamental disruption to the consumer shift from gas to electric.

“It makes no economic sense for households to keep one gas appliance because they have to pay the daily connection charge as if the whole house is using gas,” executive director Dan Cass told AAP.

Not everyone is dismayed

Predictably, the Gas Appliance Manufacturers Association of Australia (GAMAA) has welcomed the government’s decision not to ban gas cooktops from homes, describing it as a “first step towards a more commonsense approach to gas.”

“This commonsense approach is a small but important win for Victorian households, but unfortunately it remains silent on the forced conversion of hot water and space heating systems,” said GAMAA president Ross Jamieson on Monday.

The gas lobby has latched onto Frontier Economics research that has claimed the push to electrify homes in the state will drive up the cost of living for renters.

But according energy analyst Jay Gordon from IEEFA, which estimates that the average Victorian home could save $1,200 a year on its energy bills by going all-electric, getting off gas is an equitable solution for rental households, too.

“Many of these households are locked out of the savings from home electrification, as the decision to switch to electric appliances lies with rental providers, who have no incentive to do so,” Gordon writes here.

“For each year gas appliances are converted to electric rather than installing gas replacements, consumers will also avoid $912 million in locked-in costs. This considers both the relative upfront and running costs across the lifespan of those appliances.”

Freja Leonard, the No More Gas campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth, says scaremongering over Labor’s “gas backflip” distracts from the real issues, such as the health risks created by gas appliances and the huge financial burden of paying to burn gas inside homes.

“[The hype about cooktops is] an unhelpful distraction from gas heaters which guzzle half of the gas used in Victoria and the pipeline system which leaks more gas than is used in cooking statewide,” she said in a statement on Monday.

“If we are to really tackle gas use to avoid these winter shortfalls that we keep hearing about, we’ll focus on switching space heating from gas to electric as the most urgent priority.

“What we need is a plan to move the heavy gas using appliances to renewable electricity and shut down the gas mains system,” Leonard says.

“People are waking up to the health impacts of cooking with gas and making their own decision to switch to induction which is quicker, cleaner and more efficient – despite the heavy marketing push by the gas industry lately to try to promote dirty, air polluting gas as ‘clean’.”

Leonard argues that Victorian gas use is in the grip of a death spiral, regardless, thanks to government incentives and the huge cost and environmental benefits of going electric.

“From 2022 to 2023 Victoria’s overall gas use dropped from around 200Pj to 175Pj. As more people abandon expensive, polluting gas we will quickly get to the point where we don’t need the gas pipeline system anymore.”