GetUp is urging the government to support households to get off gas and switch to electric appliances powered by renewables like rooftop solar, to help people on low incomes break free from energy price rises.
According to expert modelling, an all-electric home running on renewable energy would save the average household around $5,000 a year. As a first step, around 14,000 GetUp members are calling for the government to announce an electrification and efficiency package in the May federal budget.
This package would support people on low incomes to replace gas with electric appliances powered by renewables, insulate to make their homes more energy efficient, and retrofit to make their homes more resilient to climate impacts like extreme temperatures.
GetUp Climate Justice Director Kathryn McCallum said:
"Corporations have had too much influence on how our homes are powered and built. Their profit-before-people business model means more than eight million homes are left unable to withstand climate change, inefficient, and reliant on expensive and polluting fossil fuel power.
"People who can’t easily make changes to their home – often those renting, and public and community housing residents – are hit twice: first by power bills, then by worsening extreme weather driven by burning coal and gas. As fossil fuel prices and global temperatures rise yet again, the government urgently needs to act.
“The GetUp movement wants people to live in comfortable, affordable and climate-resilient homes. The Albanese Government has a real opportunity to help people on low incomes replace gas with electric appliances, install solar, and insulate their homes, allowing them to break free from price-gouging gas corporations permanently and save up to $5,000.00 a year.
“The gas industry’s business model is expensive in every way. First, households pay skyrocketing fossil fuel costs, then communities pay to clean up after climate disasters - caused by the industry’s pollution.
"Solar and wind are the cheapest energy in the country. It's time to step into the future and electrify everything.”
ENDS
Media contact: Amy Morgan.media@getup.org.au, +61 2 8188 2870
**Notes to Editors:**Expert modelling refers to Rewiring Australia, Savings in the suburbs.