Households ponder future of gas as supply dwindles

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Renewables advocates claim it's "madness" that thousands of new piped gas connections are being installed into houses every year, despite dwindling supply.

Organisations pushing for the country to electrify say households will face steeply rising bills in the short term and huge costs when they eventually need to switch.

They say the country's declining natural gas supply should be saved as much as possible for manufacturers and other businesses, who are facing a costly and disorderly transition away from fossil fuels.

One advocate says, instead of banning new connections, an education campaign combined with a proposed financing scheme to help households switch to electric would be a better choice.

Data from the gas registry shows the overall number of 'active' gas connections has dropped and the rate of new connections has slowed.

However, new connections are still proceeding - more than 2000 were added in the last year, at a rate of nearly 200 a month.

Electrification non-profit Rewiring Aotearoa estimated another 300,000 households may use liquid petroleum gas (LPG) bottles for some form of cooking or heating.

No public data existed on the number of households using LPG, but the overall volume of LPG powering household cooking appliances, gas water heaters and heating went up nine percent between 2017-23, the most recent year of data.

The largest gas retailer in the country, Genesis, stopped accepting new piped connections last year.

But some retailers still offered gas-only connections, and Auckland network owner and distributor Vector said it would still allow new connections, if customers paid the full commissioning cost - usually about $2000.

The company, which had 120,000 residential connections on its gas network, forecasted earlier this month that it would have no new customers from 2029.

However, chief public policy and regulatory officer Mark Toner sa