'Worst of both worlds': sparse support for gas changes - Yahoo Finance Australia

Gas industry groups have expressed frustration over government proposals to phase down gas use in Australian homes and industry, arguing the measures lack clarity and provide insufficient support for the transition. The lack of consensus reflects tension between decarbonisation targets and the near-term role gas is expected to play in firming a renewables-heavy grid.

Where this fits

Australia is building a renewables grid without a credible firm-power plan. Gas is being cast as temporary, yet the electricity transition has no viable alternative to gas for the next decade or more. That leaves gas investors in limbo, unable to plan long-term infrastructure, while policy signals an exit that neither nuclear nor sufficient storage exists to replace. This is the reliability and cost pressure: a grid dependent on gas for firming, but a policy framework that starves gas investment and delays the firm-power infrastructure, nuclear or otherwise, that could actually phase gas out.

What it means

Unclear policy toward gas does not make gas obsolete; it makes it more expensive and less reliable. If gas plants retire before firm replacements are built, the grid becomes more weather-dependent and vulnerable to supply shocks. Australia is backing into a position where it needs gas but has signalled it does not want it, which is the worst of both worlds: neither the cost certainty of committed firm power nor a clean exit path. The honest choice is to build firm dispatchable capacity, and Australia's law bans the most efficient one.