Victoria to offer discounts to switch stoves from gas to electric

“We’re ensuring Victorians aren’t locked into expensive fossil gas prices and sky-high energy bills for decades – helping them switch to efficient electric appliances that will deliver significant bill savings.”

The Victorian Energy Upgrades program offers residents discounts in the form of energy efficiency certificates that can be cashed in when they exchange old appliances for more efficient electric models.

The rebates range from $120 for a household energy-efficiency assessment, and $420 to $490 for replacing old water heaters with heat pumps. A household that replaces an old ducted gas heating system with ducted reverse-cycle air can get a $3600 rebate.

Eligible appliances already include a limited range of heat pumps, a highly efficient form of heating and cooling that uses electricity to draw heat out of the surrounding atmosphere instead of directly heating air.

Victoria has 2 million gas households – the most in Australia – and builds about 50,000 new homes a year. Labor’s gas substitution policies have been welcomed by Energy Consumers Australia, CSIRO, the Grattan Institute and groups advocating swifter decarbonisation as a money-saver for households.

Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis analyst Jay Gordon on Thursday said the managed wind-down of gas networks was in the “best interests of the overall energy system”.

Rewiring Australia executive director Dan Cass said electrification offered more to Victoria than any other state because it has a higher proportion of households reliant on gas for heating, hot water and cooking.

“Electrification is the swiftest, cheapest way to lower emissions and remove thousands of dollars a year from energy bills, and it can be done with existing, off-the-shelf technology,” he said.

But Australian Energy Producers chief executive Samantha McCulloch said Labor’s beefed-up plan to end consumer gas use would only increase Victoria’s reliance on coal, which provides 60 per cent of the state’s power, thereby risking blackouts and driving up energy prices.

It also denied freedom of choice, she said.

“As the world recognised at the COP28 Summit the important role of natural gas in the energy transition, Victoria continues to undermine it and back coal-based electricity,” Ms McCulloch said.

Jon Seeley, managing director of Seeley International, Australia’s largest gas appliance manufacturer, said the move would hit lower-income households, who could not afford the upgrades, and renters.

Liberal energy spokesman David Davis agreed, saying Ms D’Ambrosio had undertaken a “reverse Robin Hood”.

“She’s clobbering poorer consumers to subsidise snappy new cooktops for the wealthy,” Mr Davis said.

Ms D’Ambrosio also said the government would conduct a review of the minimum energy-efficiency standards for rental homes next year that would explore ceiling insulation, draught-sealing, hot water, heating and cooling.

The minister in July announced that Victoria, which has the highest use of residential gas in Australia, would ban gas connections to all new homes from next year, in a move critics said would fail to reduce emissions in the short term because it would increase the state’s reliance on coal-fired power.