Report: All-electric homes are better for your wallet and the planet – here’s how governments can help us get off the gas

If every Australian household using gas today switched to running entirely on electricity, we would “save” more than 30 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over the next ten years. This is because there are more than 5 million families on the gas network, and emissions avoided per household Depending on the location, ranging from 5-25 tons over the coming decade.

Most people would also spend less money on energy. Electric appliances use less energy than gas appliances to do the same job, making them cheaper to run.

Our new report Shows how much most households could save by switching from gas to electricity for heating, hot water and cooking. The extra cash couldn’t have come at a better time: About a quarter of australian families Says he had a hard time paying his energy bills this year.

But many homes face constraints that prevent them, or make it difficult for them to go full-electric. Governments can make it easier for people and bring emissions reduction targets closer to reality.

Electrical upgrades save most homes

Households in Melbourne tend to use more gas than other mainland capitals, mainly because winters are very cold. Our report found Melbourne residents who replace broken gas appliances with electric ones, or move to an all-electric home, could save up to $13,900 over ten years. Families with rooftop solar will save even more.

It’s a similar story in most of Australia, except in the west, where gas is relatively cheap. This primarily reflects differences in the historical development of gas markets between the West and East Coasts.

Shutting off the gas can also be good for your health, Several studies link cooking to gas childhood asthma,

Families face a range of obstacles

Renters make up about a third of all households, and they have little or no control over the equipment installed. As most electric appliances cost more to buy than gas – and the bill savings subsequently flow to tenants – landlords have little incentive to upgrade their properties from gas to all-electric Is.

Living in an apartment can increase the level of complexity. Multi-unit dwellings often bundle gas bills into body-corporate fees, limiting occupants’ incentives to go fully electric. There may also be a shortage of space in these buildings. Centralized electric heat pumps, for example, take up more space than centralized gas water heaters.

Then there are the families who simply can’t afford the upgrade. Induction stoves and heat pumps are up to a combined $2,000 more expensive than their gas counterparts. This initial outlay will soon be recovered by cheaper energy bills, but it doesn’t help families who aren’t already cash-strapped. 12% of households who skipped meals Most likely to be locked in high gas bills to pay your energy bills in the last one year.

Some people also prefer to cook with gas. Some people think that induction cooktops will be no better than the poorly performing electric cooktops they may have used in the distant past. Others have never heard of a heat pump for hot water.

Here’s how governments can help

To lower people’s cost of living and reduce carbon emissions, both state and federal governments should lower barriers to all-electric homes.

As a first step, state governments should ban new gas connections to households. In 2021, more than 70,000 families will be connected to the gas network. Trying to shut off gas to homes while allowing new connections is like pouring water into a bucket with holes in it.

Then, governments should provide landlords with tax write-offs on new induction stoves and heat pumps for hot water for a limited period of time. After that, they require every rental property to be fully electric. Governments should pay to upgrade public housing to all-electric where they are the landlord. And they should be paying the nonprofit Community Housing Management to do so.

The federal government should help reduce the cost of electrical equipment in all homes over time. It should subsidize banks to offer low-interest loans for household electrification through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

And governments should be ready to change people’s preferences from gas to electricity. They should launch a multi-decade communications campaign, unlike the campaign to upgrade from analog to digital television in the early 2000s.

A major challenge will be to change people’s ideas about the best way to cook. There are examples. In Gindery, a new all-electric suburb of Canberra, a developer recruited chefs to run demonstrations on induction cooktops in a display village. Ratio of Potential Homebuyers Willing to consider buying an all-electric home increased from 67% to 88%.

‘Green gas’ no panacea: cheap electricity

The gas industry has another solution in mind: Instead of switching from gas to electricity, it suggests using “green gas”—biomethane or “green” hydrogen. Biomethane is chemically similar to natural gas, but it is derived from organic matter such as food waste, sewage or agricultural waste. Green hydrogen is made by using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

But both options are very expensive and very far away. Under the most generous of assumptions, green hydrogen will only become cost-competitive with electricity after 2045. And there isn’t enough biomethane available commercially to replace the gas in homes.

Meanwhile, more than three million Australian homes already run on electricity alone.

It will not be easy to reach 50 lakh households using gas at one place. But with good strategy, it’s doable. There is much to be achieved for homes and the climate.

This article is republished from Conversation Under Creative Commons Licence. read the original article,