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On The Detail podcast, Sharon Brettkelly talks to Consumer's Paul Fuge about dwindling gas reserves, rising prices and why relying on new gas discoveries is a mug's game.
"It costs more to have gas than electricity so an electricity-only house is much cheaper to run than a gas-electricity house because you can substitute all your gas appliances for electric appliances ... but you can't run a TV on gas or your lights on gas," Fuge says.
That means gas customers have to have an electricity connection, which means double the costs of the infrastructure - gas pipes and electricity lines - needed to deliver the energy to people's homes.
Gas customers are also locked out of cheaper electricity plans because most gas suppliers also demand that customers take their electricity. The companies that provide cheap electricity don't provide gas, Fuge says.
Add to that the phasing out of low electricity charges for low users, which was a benefit for gas customers.
"What that means is people's electricity connections for the low users are getting more expensive every year over five years and that disadvantages gas customers," he says.
When you live in a 'pocket neighbourhood', it makes sense to run on the sun and embrace electric tech - and that's exactly what the Peterborough Housing Co-op in Christchurch has done. Jim Small, a trustee for the Ōtākaro Land Trust, says the co-op has been around since the early '80s and it's "designed with the community in mind". Think shared spaces, shared gardens, cars on the outside, shared utilities and shared energy.
Read moreDownloadContact's grid-scale battery at Glenbrook is switched on and the Prime Minister talks again about 'energy independence' at the opening; how steel mills and smelters here and overseas are embracing electrons; the electric wave is a massive job creation opportunity (while imported oil does bugger all on that front) and renewable projects are set to keep New South Wales out of recession; batteries have all but displaced gas for peaks in Queensland in just a couple of years, and solar and wind overtake gas for the first time globally; data shows sales of internal combustion cars peaked in 2017 but sales of EVs more than doubled between 2022 -2025; and anyone with a heat pump is making a killing.
Read moreDownloadA proposal to let people install solar panels and other green technology using low-interest loans from their council needs to go ahead "as soon as possible", its proponents say. The government asked Local Government New Zealand to present its business case for the proposed Ratepayer Assistance Scheme (RAS) in late 2025. However, ministers still had not made any decisions about whether to go ahead with the scheme - which would let councils provide long-term loans to any homeowner who wanted to access them. That's despite growing political support from parties across the spectrum.
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