Household Gas Use
Indicator Rationale
Household gas consumption forms a significant proportion of household energy use in Victoria. A large percentage of Victorian households are connected to natural gas and is commonly used to power heating and it remains the fastest growing form of house energy consumption. Residential energy consumption is expected to increase by 20% between 1990 and 2020 (Australian Government Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, 2008) and associated with increasing house sizes, decreasing household sizes and increased demand for heating, cooling and electrical appliance usage
Data Source
The Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment has compiled data from Victorian gas distributors to provide an overview of residential gas consumption for each of Victoria's Local Government Areas. These data are only collated from piped natural gas usage and bottled gas usage is not accounted for in these data. In 2007 piped natural gas was not available in the LGAs of Bass Coast, Buloke, Gannawarra, Hindmarsh, Mansfield, Mildura, South Gippsland, Swan Hill, West Wimmera and Yarriambiack.
The methodology for deriving these values transforms postcode level source data provided by distributors into consumption data using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census and the Victorian Department of Planning and Community Development. A detailed description of the methodology is described here and the Department of Sustainability and Environment cautions users when using these statistics.
Measure
Consumption of gas per customer in gigajoules
The statistics derived to produce the indicator are experimental in nature and extreme care should be exercised when using these estimates. Data issues relate to spatial error, definitions of tariffs and classes, negative consumption and seasonality. More detail is provided on the DSE website.
References
