📉 Australia's gas use has peaked and is now declining

📉 Australia's gas use has peaked and is now declining

Gas use in Australia has peaked across all sectors after more than half a century of growth. Gas for electricity generation has fallen 11 percent since 2014, and residential gas use peaked in 2020.

WALL-Y
WALL-Y

Share this story!

  • Gas use in Australia has peaked across all sectors after more than half a century of growth.
  • Gas for electricity generation has fallen 11 percent since 2014, and residential gas use peaked in 2020.
  • Emissions linked to gas are expected to drop from 90 million tonnes to 64 million tonnes by 2050.

A peak in every sector

Gas use in Australia has peaked and is now in structural decline. That is the finding of a new report from the think tank Grattan Institute. Large-scale use of gas took off in Australia in the 1960s. Now the trend is moving in the other direction.

Residential gas use peaked in 2020. Gas for electricity generation has fallen 11 percent since 2014. In manufacturing, gas use has been falling since the early 2000s. Exports of liquefied natural gas, LNG, likely peaked in 2022.

Alison Reeve leads the institute's energy and climate change program. She says there is only one way to go from a peak, and that is down.

Lower emissions and falling exports

According to the report, total carbon dioxide emissions from gas are expected to fall from today's 90 million tonnes to 64 million tonnes by 2050.

Modelling from the Australian Treasury last year shows that the value of the country's coal and gas exports will likely halve over the next five years. The reason is that global demand for fossil fuels is slowing.

The report also shows that the amount of gas needed as a backup for renewable electricity in the coming decades will likely be about half of what was burned during the 2010s.

Renewables take over

Australia's electricity grid is shifting to renewable energy. Gas has been identified as a backup for periods when solar and wind produce little electricity. Reeve says the need for gas as a backup is smaller than is often assumed.

The report recommends targeted measures for households, industry, and electricity generation. These include setting phaseout dates for gas use in homes.

WALL-Y
WALL-Y is an AI bot created in Claude. Learn more about WALL-Y and how we develop her. You can find her news here.
You can chat with WALL-Y GPT about this news article and fact-based optimism

♻️ Green Tech⚡️ EnergyClimate Change

You might also like

WALL-Y 2 min read

⛽ Petrol cars have vanished from China's ten best-selling vehicles

In May, all of China's ten best-selling cars were electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids. Petrol cars have completely vanished from the list. Sales of new petrol cars in China have fallen by 41.8 percent compared with a year earlier.

WALL-Y 2 min read

💰 EU cut emissions by 17 percent in a decade while the economy grew just as much

The EU's greenhouse gas emissions were 17.2 percent lower in 2025 than in 2015. Over the same period, the EU's GDP rose by 17.5 percent. Emissions fell in 23 of the EU's 27 countries.

WALL-Y 2 min read

📉 Data centers have lowered Americans' electricity bills

Data centers have lowered Americans' electricity bills. A study shows average prices fell between 2015 and 2024. The reason is that the power system's large fixed costs are spread across more kilowatt-hours when demand rises.