A plan to “electrify everything” with rooftop solar, batteries and electric vehicles would save households across the country more than $5,000 a year and particularly benefit those living in outer Melbourne suburbs, according to a new analysis.
Electrification would involve fitting every home with solar panels and batteries and replacing gas devices – cooktops, hot water and heating systems – and petrol cars with electric models.
A report by Dr Saul Griffith, the founder of Rewiring Australia and a former adviser to the US government on energy policy, last year suggested a $12bn investment in household electrification over five years could eliminate a third of Australia’s emissions while saving households $40bn a year by 2028.
New modelling breaks the savings down for each federal electorate. Griffith found the 10 seats expected to benefit the most include several in the outer suburbs and on the fringe of Melbourne. They were McEwen, Casey, Holt, La Trobe, Aston and Menzies.
For the top ranking electorate, the Labor-held McEwen on Melbourne’s outer northern fringe, the annual savings by 2030 were estimated to be $5,570 per household and $315m across the community.
Others in the top 10 included Wright, a safe LNP seat covering part of the Gold Coast hinterland, Labor-held Bean in the ACT, the emissions reduction minister Angus Taylor’s electorate of Hume near Canberra, and the defence minister Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson on the outskirts of Brisbane.
The throughline for the top 10 was that households were on average highly reliant on cars to get around. Victorian electorates ranked particularly high because, compared with other states, they were more likely to rely on gas for heating and cooking. Gas is piped to most Victorian homes.
Griffith said electrification was the most substantial climate action that an Australian household could take, and the benefits would be amplified if an entire community was electrified, in part because it would create skilled work in the area.
He recommended the Australian Renewable Energy Agency conduct four pilot programs, costing up to $100m in total and covering 300-500 households per pilot in two urban and two rural communities, as a first step.
“With any change, we need to show people how it works and iron out any issues before we move towards the mass electrification of the country.
“Households in these communities would receive support in the process of electrification and subsidies for new electric appliances, solar, battery, energy control system and lease of an electric vehicle.”
Griffith said the analysis was based on publicly available energy usage data. He said electric appliances were energy savers compared with alternatives and Australian rooftop solar was the cheapest form of home energy in the world.
For example, an electric car costs about 8 cents per kilometre to drive if charged from the grid, and about 1 cent per kilometre if charged using rooftop solar. An internal combustion engine car cost about 12 cents per kilometre to run when the price of petrol was $1.43 a litre. The price of petrol has increased significantly since then.
He said it was a similar story with hot water. Heating a shower with a gas water heater cost about 89 cents in 2019, while using an electric heat pump cost 21 cents if grid electricity was used and a little more than 5 cents if it ran on rooftop solar.
On cooking, Griffith said an electric induction stovetop was cheaper than a gas stove and was healthier as it did not release pollutants into the home.
The Greens had adopted Griffith’s model as part of their election platform. The party leader, Adam Bandt, said $235m should be spent on two pilot electrification programs, one in a suburb and one in a regional town. “It’s time to get off the gas, get batteries in our homes, and solar on the roof. We will show this works at scale, creating jobs and powering up a community,” he said.
