The gas company Jemena has come under fire from environmental groups for offering customers in New South Wales cash incentives to replace their electric home appliances with gas ones.
Customers can claim money back for buying a range of gas appliances, such as $500 for ducted heating, $400 for hot water, $400 for a gas log fire and $100 for a cooktop, with Jemena putting up $250,000 for the promotion.
Jemena has defended the promotion, arguing the industry is decarbonising and gas offers an affordable alternative. But environmentalists reject this claim.
The program is in contrast to policies in Victorian and NSW aimed at winding back gas use and shifting towards renewables, such as rebates for homeowners who install solar panels. Victoria has a program with incentives for homes to replace gas appliances with efficient electric alternatives.
The Nature Conservation Council and Environment Victoria have criticised Jemena for offering financial incentives to switch to gas in the midst of a climate crisis.
“It’s a backward step,” Environment Victoria’s policy and advocacy manager, Bronya Lipski, said.
“Gas is on the way out, the industry knows it is on the way out, and this is one of those last-ditch attempts to hang on for as long as possible, and squeeze as much profit out of the community.”
Brad Smith, policy and advocacy director at the Nature Conservation Council, said national gas, which consists mostly of methane, was a major contributor to the climate crisis.
“Every new appliance connected to gas locks in decades of guaranteed profits for Jemena, and decades of pollution for the rest of us,” Smith said.
Michael Pintabona, a spokesperson for Jemena, said gas has a “lower carbon footprint than coal” and makes more economic sense in Australia.
“Short-to-medium term calls to electrify household appliances will simply move customers away from gas … to an electricity grid which is still currently overwhelmingly reliant on coal.”
He said the company was working on evolving its gas network to “transport renewable gases in the future” and said a mixture of gas and renewables was the best way for Australians to power their homes in the future.
But Lipski said methane gas will never be renewable, as it is a fossil fuel, and it will probably be “prohibitively expensive” to switch methane gas systems to hydrogen-powered ones.
“ So even in the extremely remote possibility that this happens, it’s going to take far too long – inconsistent with the speed required to mitigate climate change,” she said.
“We know that the solution to this whole problem is electrification powered by renewables.”
