Why are local governments across Sydney pushing for all-electric dwellings?

In the coming years, LGAs like the City of Sydney and, most recently, North Sydney will likely be building thousands of electric residences powered by renewable energy.

However, when you hear this in the news, it might not always be broken to you in this way.

What you might hear instead is that “North Sydney is banning gas in new homes”.

But when you consider the general demand for this change, the cost savings, and how few homes are actually impacted, there is much that this framing leaves out.

What happened: A drafted amendment to North Sydney Council’s development plans will ensure new residential developments in the LGA will be all-electric, meaning gas connections will not be installed.

It might not be entirely untrue to say this proposition would “ban gas” in new homes, but it certainly does not show the whole picture.

🖼️The big picture: For instance, it leaves out the fact that these new all-electric houses would only make up around 13% of North Sydney’s dwellings by 2030, going off state housing targets. However, going by the actual amount of residential buildings approved in the last financial year, this figure could be closer to 3%.

There is palpable demand among Australians for residences like these, too. 

• According to a survey from independent non-profit Energy Consumers Australia (ECA), one in three Australian homeowners who use gas are thinking about cancelling their gas supply in the next ten years. 

A question of dollars and good sense: The trend is not purely motivated by environmental concerns, either, with practical economic considerations as well.

• For example, a CSIRO report identified that, by 2030, electric residences will see a reduction in wholesale costs of $700 a year. 

• Gas bills, on the other hand, are set to rise: the report projects that as usage goes down, gas networks will likely charge the customer more to make up for this loss. 

🔐Locking in: While a homeowner living in a detached unit can easily make the decision to disconnect their gas, the process is much more difficult for those living in strata complexes. 

This is particularly an issue in LGAs like North Sydney, where almost 90 percent of homes are medium or high density.

• ECA General Manager Brian Spak told the Lorikeet that “apartment dwellers often face the biggest barriers to electrifying, due to shared infrastructure and limited roof space for solar”.

According to Spak, policy ensuring the installation of electric power systems prevents people from being locked into high-cost gas they can’t easily change later.

🗣️ “It’s sometimes framed as removing choice, but in practice it’s about removing risk – especially for people who would otherwise have no real choice about the energy systems built into their homes.”

🩻Health and safety: Gas stoves in residences are shown to increase indoor pollution. Associate Professor Donna Green at UNSW writes that cooking on a gas stove results in “regular dose of air pollutants quite close to your face”, and that chemicals such as methane can also leak from stoves even when they are turned off.

The Australian Journal of General Practice has also linked the use of gas stoves indoors to childhood asthma, estimating that 12% of cases are attributable to gas cooking stoves.

➡️So what’s the story? 

North Sydney’s move to phase out gas follows a larger movement across the country, in which both the Victorian and ACT governments implemented similar policies state-wide.

“It's beyond time that this council joins our neighbors and others across the nation”, North Sydney Mayor Zoë Baker said to council, introducing the motion in August.

The draft amendment is now open for community feedback until Friday 14 November. 

Image: Ilse Driessen via Unsplash