Victoria’s gas cooktop concession is hardly laudable, but it’s not a tectonic shift in policy, either

This week the Allen government introduced legislation to progress its long-standing policy of replacing Victoria’s rapidly disappearing gas supplies with climate friendly alternatives.

If you were reading the Murdoch press, whose main source seemed to be press releases from the gas industry and the Liberal party, then you would have thought there had been a tectonic shift in Victorian energy policy. The reality was far more mundane.

First, some context. Over the past two years the Victorian government has repeatedly stated its intent to carefully and gradually shift Victorian households off gas. This is necessary, they have explained, to manage the triple whammy of rising gas prices, dwindling local supplies and the pressing need to cut greenhouse emissions.

Industry analysts and resource economists largely agree the policy is a “no brainer” – we’re running out of local, cheap gas and so where we can substitute in an alternative energy source, we should do so. 

Not only does this benefit households, who get a cheaper, cleaner product that is good for their health, it also means that the limited remaining supplies of local gas can be kept in reserve for those uses that are not yet as easy to substitute – like heavy industry, where electric replacement technologies are on their way but not yet commercially competitive.

And to make the switch even more of a no brainer, renewable electricity comes from a source that will literally never run out.

The other important bit of context if that for much of the past 60 years Victoria has been a net exporter of gas. The massive – and relatively cheap and easy to drill – gas fields in the Bass Strait have flowed freely, enabling global fossil fuel giants like ExxonMobil to make an absolute motza selling the excess gas into interstate markets. Most of the exporting was done in the warmer months, when production far outstripped Victorian demand. 

In winter, headroom between supply and demand has always narrowed for a few brief months as Victorian homes and commercial buildings fire up vast – and incredibly inefficient – gas heating systems.

Now, as the Bass Strait gas wells approach their end of life and the gas coming up the pipe is slowing to a trickle, that headroom will soon be eliminated altogether, leaving Victoria with the prospect of winter shortfalls – not something anyone wants to see when the mercury plunges to single digits.

Which brings us to this week, with the Allan government introducing legislation that will allow the gradual replacement of Victoria’s four million gas appliances by mandating that when an old one reaches the end of its life, it can only be replaced by an efficient one – which means an electric one.

Just like Australia did with cars that use leaded petrol, just as we did with asbestos and CFCs, and innumerable other products where it has turned out that a safer, better alternative was readily available.

In reporting on the legislation, the Murdoch press obsessed over one relatively minor detail; the fact that the Allan government will, for now, focus on the appliances that consume 97% of the gas burned in Victorian homes – heaters and hot water units – rather than cooktops which account for about 1.5% of Victoria’s gas use and less than 1% of the gas produced off Victoria.

According to the Murdoch pundits, this was incontrovertible proof that Victorian Labor’s gas substitution policy was a castle made of sand. A massive back down! A sign that the entire electrification edifice would crumble! We will all eat, breathe and excrete fossil gas until the end of days! Huzzah! 

Meanwhile, Lily D’Ambrosio, the nation’s longest serving energy minister, calmly introduced her legislation signalling the next phase of an orderly transition to a cleaner, vastly more affordable future. 

So why the sensational, mouth-frothing nonsense from the gas industry and its stenographers in the Murdoch press? The answer is that they know Victorians mostly just want our homes and our showers to be warm at a reasonable cost, without caring whether it’s electrons or methane molecules that do the job.

But they think – or at least they hope – they can foment a backlash from enough Masterchef-watching swing voters to scare the Allen government into backing down on the entire home electrification agenda.

In reality, there are no angry hordes of tong-wielding home cooks descending on Spring St, and the Allen government is pressing ahead with its longstanding – and ultimately rather conventional – gas substitution policy.

But in the age of misinformation, why let the facts get in the way of a useful narrative? 

Incidentally there is another, more profound reason we should be switching to induction stoves. Cooking with gas is a leading cause of childhood asthma and a number of respiratory and cardiovascular symptoms.

The Allen government’s failure to address this problem is hardly laudable. But given that cooktops account for only 1.5% of Victoria’s gas use, neither is it a sign that they are backing away from the enormous task of phasing out gas.

Jono La Nauze is the CEO of Environment Victoria