The City of Sydney Council has banned gas in almost all new buildings in an effort to combat “climate change”, and says it will also save residents money.
The new planning controls were adopted on Monday night, and expand on restrictions on indoor gas appliances such as cooktops and heaters that were adopted earlier this year following similar bans in Victoria, the ACT, and six other NSW councils.
From January 1 2027 all new residential buildings, large commercial buildings, hotels and serviced apartment buildings will be required to be “all-electric”, with indoor gas ban extended to cover outdoor appliances such as hot water heaters.
Existing and buildings and those for industrial use will not be affected, and the council said food and beverage premises in mixed-use developments will still be able to use gas as long as they are built to be capable of future electrification.
Sydney’s far-left Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the decision was a “logical response to the challenges posed by fossil fuels” and claimed there was a “broad community consensus on the need to end our reliance on gas”.
“Relying on gas is bad for the planet, bad for our finances and bad for our health,” she said.
“Creating more energy efficient, healthier buildings which will meet future energy standards and avoid expensive retrofitting is an obvious next step.
“The reality is gas is an expensive commodity that is forecast to go up in price. These measures will spare households from being locked into increasingly expensive and outdated gas contracts.”
The council said households in new all-electric developments would save $626 per year by not using gas, and claimed that electric induction cooktops offered health benefits as “exposure to pollutants from gas cooktops can have health impacts comparable to passive smoking”.
The City of Sydney Council has been trying to ban gas for years, has a target of “net zero” emissions by 2035, and wants 50% of its electricity met by renewable sources by 2030.
Leading Sydney to a decarbonised future is a key priority for us, and this environmental strategy sets out how we’ll continue to reduce our emissions and tackle the climate crisis head on,” Ms Moore said in April, and in 2023 said banning gas would help “address global boiling”.
Premier Chris Minns has previously ruled out a state-wide ban on gas, saying he was concerned about pressure on the power grid due to a reduction in base load electricity.
Header image credit: Jason Briscoe – Unsplash
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