Getting high on your own supply

You can no longer stick your head in the oven, but there's always sand.

We’ve talked previously about how gas is the new frontier of the culture wars and two weeks ago an arm of the gas lobby electricity and gas networks industry body Energy Networks Australia (ENA) launched a counter offensive against the Climate Council’s anti-gas campaign salvo. While we’re not quite at culture war levels in Australia,¹ the debate over gas is only heating up.

The Climate Council has released a campaign called I Quit Gas² encouraging people to commit to removing gas appliances from their homes. The ENA fired back with a report which reads like the half-arsed English assignment of a disinterested grade 9 student. It’s not that report doesn’t address the Climate Council’s criticisms; it’s just that it does it in the least convincing manner possible. You can practically hear the feet shuffling down the corridor.

This week we’re talking about ** shudders ** renewable gas, and the pitch to keep gas in your household.

The Case Against Gas

Access to natural gas provided huge improvements for household energy access. Prior to the development of reticulated natural gas networks, most homes were powered by burning wood, coal or town gas (predominantly made from coal). Natural gas burns cleaner than wood or coal, and unlike town gas it won’t kill you in a confined space (due to carbon monoxide).

But in the 21st century there’s plenty of strong arguments against gas in households, not to mention the efficiency and cleanliness of electrical appliances.³

The Climate Council’s campaign starts by presenting a couple of facts, and then three arguments as to why households should shift away from gas usage:

• Fact 1: Gas is expensive. Australian gas prices have tripled over the last decade and there’s no evidence that future prices will subside significantly.

• Fact 2: The latest assessment report (AR6) from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change unequivocally warned that not is the only observed warming is from human activities,⁴ we have not done enough to date to limit warming below 2ºC (the Paris Agreement target).

It’s worth noting that the ENA rebuttal doesn’t refute either of these facts, and explicitly calls out that the greenhouse gas emissions (from human activities) are the cause of climate change.

The arguments from the Climate Council as to why you should ditch gas in your house are threefold:

1. Save money, by using more efficient electrical appliances and no longer having to pay for your connection to the gas network.

2. Make your home safer, by ceasing to burn gas inside your house.

3. Reduce emissions, by not burning stuff.

What’s the case for gas?

Well, the ENA report doesn’t actually try to convince us that household gas usage is a good thing; its entire line of argument is based around inertia:

1. Australians have a “strong connection to their gas appliances”⁵

2. Household gas consumption only contributes approximately 2% to Australia’s national emissions (so why bother).

3. In time, the gas will be renewable or carbon offset, so don’t worry about it!

The rest of the report is spent rebutting the Climate Council’s campaign in an attempt to chalk it all up as a scare campaign.

Let’s adjudicate.

Will I save money?

If the question is “will I save money day to day by switching from gas to electric appliances” the answer is almost definitely yes — electric appliances are more efficient and did we mention that whole bit where gas has become really expensive? There’s no real dispute that the operating costs of gas are expensive, and the ENA report makes a conspicuous point of never discussing the price of gas.

If the question is “will my investment in electric appliances give me a return on investment within some arbitrarily specified investment horizon because my spouse has IRR goals” well, maybe. It depends on the capital cost of replacing the devices and yes, as the ENA points out potential additional upgrades to a house.

The arguments around cost depend on the costs of the appliances you buy. The reality is, appliances will need to be replaced eventually. There is a very strong argument that, instead of replacing gas with gas, these appliances should be converted to electric. In some cases, it will make sense to pre-emptively replace them before the end of life.

Many gas appliances in households are old, meaning they’re less efficient. And in the case of space heating a lot of these aren’t set up efficiently — there are no dampers installed to isolate specific rooms (because that drives up the cost of installation significantly), which means you heat the entire house, or not at all. Not a great solution and these factors all increase the operating costs of these appliances.⁶

On the other hand, heat pumps are incredibly efficient electric space and water heaters. The amount of energy they use is much less than their gas equivalents.

The ENA report makes sure to highlight a bunch of edge cases where electrification will be difficult — most of these are furphies; for example instantaneous or small boiler electric water heaters for use in small townhouses or apartments have existed for decades. Instantaneous gas water heaters are not the **only** solution.

Their response also makes a weird argument that the savings will be undermined because the efficiency of the devices will degrade over time, and the devices will need to be replaced — both of which are not unique to electric appliances; gas appliances suffer these same problems and you’re probably wasting money currently thanks to an inefficient older appliance.⁷

The ENA argues that the payback depends on favourable electrification costs. We would argue their claims rely on some extra favourable assumptions about renewable gas…

Will it be safer?

The Climate Council’s claims are based on reports linking gas cooking indoors to asthma. The science of this is somewhat contested, but the general consensus is that it’s probably not good for you. Burning gas produces nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter, which are not good for human health.

The report referenced by the ENA strongly disputes the casual link between gas stovetops and asthma, but it doesn’t deny that gas stovetops produce NOx and particulate matter harmful to humans. They suggest that using a rangehood correctly (are you always turning that rangehood on?) should limit or mitigate much of these emissions, but concede that huffing gas combustion products is probably not good for you.

Again, this will probably come down to personal preference. The evidence isn’t strong enough that gas cooking will be regulated out of existence, but consumers who are concerned or sensitive to the impacts of indoor emissions will be motivated to remove gas appliances.

Will it reduce emissions?

Yes.

While the speed of the energy transition is up for debate, the electricity grid is becoming increasingly renewable. Burning natural gas will always release emissions. Moving from gas to electric will reduce emissions.

And as discussed previously electric appliances are more efficient than their gas counterparts — for every unit of energy consumed by the appliances less is wasted in the conversion process (as heat energy). So even under a non-renewable grid scenario, switching away from gas appliances still reduce emissions.

The Role for Gas in the Future

If the ENA make a t-shirt or mug in that cute little loveheart shaped gas burner we’d quite like one to add to our collection of Australian political ephemera alongside Josh Frydenberg’s “back in black mug”, Scott Morrison’s lump of coal, and an Engadine Maccas receipt.⁸

One of the key bits of information missing from the ENA’s report, but obliquely alluded to in the Climate Council’s campaign, is that many Australian state governments and councils have committed to or are on the pathway to phasing out gas connections for residential households.

And while there are currently limited government subsidies encouraging households to shift from gas appliances to electric ones, these schemes are being reviewed and will likely include much stronger incentives to shift away from gas in the near future.

There are also several grass roots community groups pushing the idea of all electric homes including the My Efficient Electric Home group on Facebook and the Saul Griffiths led Electrify 2515 creating a fully electric suburb north of Wollongong.⁹

Most of these movements were already well under way prior to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine which drove gas prices to extreme heights; this event just hastened the shift away from gas.

Energy Networks Australia, the peak industry body for electricity and gas networks, has a vested interest in ensuring gas remains in residential homes. Gas networks (like electricity networks) earn a regulated revenue for their owners. The motivation is money (shocked face emoji).

To keep piping gas into your house the gas lobby have channelled their arguments into two key streams:

1. Focusing on the emotional attachment to gas cooking, which becomes the lynchpin keeping gas in residential usage; and

2. Making vague promises that gas usage will become greener through some unspecified combination of biogas, hydrogen blending, carbon capture and storage or purchasing good old offsets (aka making it someone else’s problem). The problem here is that the industry already has a good track record of missing targets and kicking the can down the road. Do you really believe their pinky promises?

It’s likely that gas will stick around in the system for some time as a transition fuel to power gas peaking generation, off-grid generation and as a feedstock for fertiliser. But these are all better (and more efficient uses) then using it to heat your house in the middle of winter to keep your tootsies toasty. This is even more true when there are plenty of very good alternatives (heat pumps, reverse cycle air-conditioners, putting a fucking sweater on) seems rather wasteful.

Like wood, coal and town gas, natural gas in residential homes is destined to be a relic of the past. The only question is how much longer.

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Things Happen

• Car makers are called on the Federal Government to tighten up CO2 standards for vehicles on Australian roads. The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries asked for more ambition in emissions standard regulation.

• The new NSW Labor government has commenced talks with Brookfield (the new owners of Origin, remember?), increasing speculation that they might try to buy the ageing coal-fired power station, Eraring.

• With no news on the whereabouts of Florence, the tunnel-boring machine that fell down a hole, Currently Speaking will hold a teary press conference, asking the public to come forward with information.

1. The official designator of a culture war is when someone unironically says ‘woke’.

2. They’ve teamed up with author Sarah Wilson and riffed on her I Quit Sugar cookbook. Unlike betting or crypto (RIP) ads, this is a huge celebrity get for the energy industry.

3. There’s a version of purgatory where you’re stuck endlessly cleaning baked on food spillage from between the gas burners. Pulling those stupid little rings off and trying to force the sponge into crevices designed for combustion with limited thought as to usability.

4. Every previous assessment report, dating back to 1990, says this too, in case you were “just asking questions”.

5. a) I’m genuinely not sure if this is a pun, or they just literally mean that those quarter inch pipes are well sealed; or b) is this more like Lars and the Real Girl? Oh, also this data comes from a survey commissioned by ENA.

6. Especially in notoriously drafty old Australian homes.

7. DID WE MENTION HOW EXPENSIVE GAS IS?

8. You do not want an image of this.

9. These groups are deep mines of genuine advice and information on how to improve your household energy consumption and how much it will cost. Even if you’re not planning on ripping out your gas appliances tomorrow, you should probably have a look.