Saving $1500 a year? The gas industry's not impressed.

Victoria is running out of gas. But if you opened a newspaper or turned on the TV, you might find that hard to believe.

This week, it was announced gas hot water systems will be phased out of Victorian homes from March 2027.

The Victorian Government says it wants people to be less reliant on gas because it’ll save them money. ⚡ Electricity = emissions targets

The move to electricity is a key part of meeting the state’s emissions reduction targets — 75 to 80% by 2035 and net zero by 2045.

New homes will have to be all-electric under the state’s reforms. And according to Environment Victoria, the change could save households around $1500 a year on energy bills.

Yeah — why not just drill?

Well, that leads to more emissions.

More emissions = more severe weather. So, more intense floods, fires, droughts, cyclones.

And even if you only care about money, climate change means higher insurance premiums, more infrastructure damage, rising disaster costs, pressure on the healthcare system, and people being unable to work or study.

Just this year alone, natural disasters have already cost Australia over $2.2 billion, according to the Treasury. And a Climate Change Authority report estimates that, by 2050, disasters could be costing us $8 billion a year.

According to Josh Runciman, lead gas analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, drilling for more gas doesn’t solve the problem — because only about a quarter of the gas produced on the east coast is used here in Australia. The rest? Exported.

And to be fair, exports are lucrative. Gas exports earned Australia $92 billion in 2022–23, according to the Australian Energy Producers.

So yeah, no wonder the gas industry is pushing to drill more rather than electrify homes.

The threat to the gas industry’s relevance in Australia is probably also why we’re seeing ads like this.

That’s just one of many, a wider campaign from the gas industry that ran from December 2023 to June 2024, documented by a non-profit think tank called InfluenceMap.

Their report says the gas industry deliberately played on fears — like the idea that transitioning away from gas would hurt affordability and energy security.

Meanwhile, if you were watching MasterChef, you may have seen ads promoting “renewable gas” — which, surprise! isn’t actually that clean or green. It’s still methane gas. It’s still being burned. It still creates emissions. And according to the Grattan Institute, it’s not commercially viable.

The ad segment on MasterChef — much to the disappointment of the Australian Gas Infrastructure Group who sponsored it — actually breached ad standards.

They had to pull the ads.

Late last year, News Corp papers published this “special report” or “exclusive” under the headline:

STEP ON THE GAS.

In Queensland, they published it at the same time Brisbane was flooding.

And what made this story so exclusive? So special?

Well, the sometimes-titled“Only gas can save us now” piece was sponsored by APA, Tamboran, Santos and Jemena.

AKA: The gas industry.

Now, if you look at the reforms in place vs. what the Victorian Government originally proposed back in 2022, you’d have to say: some of the advertising and industry pressure did have an effect.

In October, the government added an exemption so that end-of-life gas cooktops didn’t have to be replaced with electric ones.

Now, the same thing applies for heaters. And the Allan Government has decided not to go ahead with a full phase-out of gas heaters.

This has been framed in some media as a backtrack, backdown or backflip — which, by the way, if it was a backflip you’d end up facing the same way you started. 

And yes, it is a softening of the original plan. But they didn’t fully cave.

The new policy still sets up more electrification and future gas phase-outs, and Victoria’s still on the path toward Net Zero.

In the future, it's likely we’re going to see all sorts of advertisements. And read all sorts of stories. About renewables. About fossil fuels. About “energy choice.”

There’s money on the line, after all. 

It’s up to you how critically you look at it.