Dr Tom Longden says Sydney's gas ban would not apply to existing connections
City of Sydney council is the latest council to move to ban gas in new homes and businesses. Similar measures have already been put in place by state governments in Victoria and the ACT, along with Waverly and Parramatta councils in Sydney. Dr Tom Longden is an energy economist at Western Sydney University he says the ban would not apply to existing gas connections.
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TVTranscript
00:00 No one's being forced or being told to change their current gas appliances.
00:06 This only applies to new builds and renovations that are large enough that you actually have
00:11 to change the gas meter.
00:13 So that doesn't happen that often.
00:14 One of the important things about what these governments are doing are signalling that
00:18 they see electrification as the future and really sending that signal to the broader
00:22 community to rethink whether they actually need gas.
00:26 Gas is quite dirty because you have methane emissions at the time of extraction.
00:30 A lot of people don't talk about that.
00:32 And then it's the CO2 that happens when you burn the gas.
00:35 But also lots of people and lots of studies have come out talking about the impacts on
00:38 asthma and other people with respiratory conditions.
00:41 So there's a lot of reasons to start thinking about getting away from gas.
00:45 It's relatively a step-by-step process, really signalling that people need to start thinking
00:49 about it.
00:51 And really for people at home, it's really at the time when you're thinking about replacing
00:55 your oven.
00:56 And most people in NSW don't even have gas.
00:58 It's only about 43%.
01:00 In ACT Victoria it's towards 70%.
01:03 But there'll be a lot of people at home wondering why this is so controversial.
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