All pain and no gain in Victoria’s gas ban – by Jon Seeley

Gas manufacturers have reacted strongly against moves by Victoria to ban new gas connections. Here Jon Seeley, whose company manufactures the Braemar range of gas appliances and Seeley air coolers, attacks the decision for driving up emissions.

The Victorian Government’s foolish and short-sighted ban on gas in new homes will only push emissions higher and increase the risk of blackouts.

Forcing people off gas causes more brown coal to be burned in our aging power stations, while increasing the strain on an already-fragile energy grid.

This is an indisputable fact that the Victorian government willfully ignores in its blind, ideological pursuit of cheap ill-informed ‘green’ votes.

Stop being dishonest with Victorians. Stop denying the simple science that right now, in Victorian homes, electricity from brown coal is four times more emissions intensive than natural gas.

Stop using the cover of a righteous environmental pursuit and a climate emergency, to spread mistruths and lies.

The government is driving up emissions with this decision, not reducing emissions, and throwing Victorians out of the frying pan into the fire. Less gas equals more coal.

In backing her decision today, Minister D’Ambrosio (Minister for Climate Action, Minister for Energy and Resources, and Minister for the State Electricity Commission Lily D’Ambrosio) claimed the gas sector represented 17 per cent of Victoria’s emissions, but ignored the fact that residential gas (the focus of this ban) represents less than two per cent of emissions.

This is a gross deception by a minister desperately trying to justify a poor policy decision.

Minister D’Ambrosio has also deviously played the financial fear card, referring to the big increases in gas costs, but ignoring the even bigger increases in electricity costs, which this year alone are in excess of 20 per cent.

We all recognise the need to transition away from fossil fuels.

But the transition has to be carefully managed, not rushed. And it must be done in a way that steadily reduces emissions, not drives them up as this ban undoubtedly will.

Choice for Victorians, even within your own home, appears to be a threatened species.

How galling for a morally bankrupt State Government that has run Victoria’s economy into the ground, to now dictate how people live their lives, heat their homes and cook their meals.

This dangerous ideology is not only blind to logic and commonsense, it defies trends in Europe and North America where gas, far from being banned by zealots, is being embraced with a transition to renewable gas.

Jon Seeley is Group Managing Director, Seeley International

Picture: Jon Seeley