I was reading with great interest a few weeks back that methane is being processed and introduced into Sydneys natural gas lines from the sewerage works. I know in the past that some mechanics have been toying with the idea of using it to run the internal combustion engine.
Whats the possibility of this becoming mainstream as opposed to EVs. The Sydney project is still in its infancy.
Think about it this way! Methane gets produced every second of everyday and this will not stop. Wouldnt it be better to harness it and the resultant exhaust emissions would have to be better than the raw material.
I do remember a documentary on a European Country running all its buses and trains on Methane generated from cow pats some time ago and the benefits were tremendous. The off shoot product was high quality fertiliser which the farmers reused to enrich their crops.
This also makes you wonder about the idiocy of the ACT government in banning natural gas connection to new houses.

I am not sure whether methane or natural gas is better for the environment but I do know this, methane extracted from heated coal used to be the only gas available in most areas until the Moomba gas field in SA was discovered. At the once-mighty Mortlake gas works in Sydney, coal was heated in retorts and the methane extracted, filtered, tested and then pumped into the huge gasometers which used to rise and fall with the gas levels inside them and from there it was distributed to customers.

When natural gas came along, everyone's stove and water heater needed to be rejetted to allow less gas through due to it having a higher thermal efficiency. That said, it is a little-known fact that there is some methane already in natural gas.

One other thing that happens with natural gas before it goes to customers is that a stink is added to it to make it smell like methane. This is merely for safety reasons as natural gas in its raw form is odourless.

Onto another aspect of the debate surrounding domestic gas consumption and it relates to the Commonwealth Government's thinly veiled push to get people to replace gas appliances with electric ones. This is another aspect of the socialist side of politics thinking the content of their backsides instead of with their brains. Not only is this approach completely wasteful in terms of the money it will cost both the Government and consumers but it is nigh on impossible to do without extra expenditure on new electricity generation (and I mean baseload generation and not this solar and wind crapola) and the possible rewire of every home that is involved.

Homes built back in the days following the widespread replacement of gas lighting in homes with electric lighting, and one or two power points as well, switchboards and consumers mains cabling was fit for that purpose and nothing else. All homes at the time had at least one fireplace or wood/coke fired stove and with this and an electric stove and water heater, there was no need for the heavy duty cabling that is installed in modern homes - typically 16mm² consumers mains, a 100A meter and service fuse and three lighting circuits, three or four power circuits and one for the air conditioner. This has to be installed regardless of whether the kitchen is gas or electric and is simply a minimum requirement.

Back in the 1920s through to the 1970s, if your stove and water heater ran on gas, it was assumed this would never change, so the less beefy electricals were accepted as the norm, typically 4mm² consumers mains, a 40A meter and service fuse and one light and one power circuit - no air conditioning. For most, a second power circuit was added down the track for a fridge and washing machine.

The radio was often plugged into a lamp socket with a bayonet double adaptor.

Even when people started getting their homes rewired, and then later fitted with RCDs, the council's equipment and consumers mains was kept. I rewired several homes in the 1990s when RCDs started to become fashionable and only ever rewired the final subcircircuits and most other electricians did the same thing and everything between the main switch and the pole in the street was left alone.

This means that anyone converting from gas to electric in older homes will also have to spend money on getting everything replaced - the consumers mains, service equipment, switchboard and also add a final subcircuit for each of the stove and water heater. In some cases the consumers aerials will also have to be replaced. 4mm² consumers aerials are far too small for modern requirements.

All of this assumes the customer doesn't also drive an electric car and wants to have a fast charger installed. This is another topic for another day. From what I have read, fast chargers require three phases, which means a poly-phase meter and two extra service fuses be installed, along with the three phase circuit to the charger. Some of this is government subsidised but the bottom line is, that is what is keeping taxes and debt as high as it is. So we are paying the full price anyway.

In the house I live in, we have gas for the stove and water heater and I will not even contemplate converting.

Brad I agree whole heartedly.
My simplest thoughts with methane is this! Its being produced and will never stop being produced. The burnt methane would have to be better then the raw product for our atmosphere. Its readily available as well.
But your in depth comment has blown me away. The idiocy of government.

Burning methane still emits CO2,
The Wanker Class will shoot that down in flames like everything else.
They will not rest until we eat our food raw, sleep in mud huts and freeze to death in winter.

Bringbackthevalve but studies confirm that CO2 is still better than raw methane.

Carl, unfortunately the mob who want to destroy the West do NOT care about studies.

They have a fixed task; Destroy our economy.

No amount of reason will stop the noisy minority from doing what they have been told, trained and indoctrinated to do.

I'm on your side mate, but no matter what we use for our energy to sustain ourselves, our enemies will protest loud and hard, regardless.

Example: In the 80's the Wanker Class stopped the best possible source of energy for our entire country. Had the dam been built we all would have benefited with wonderful sustainable hydroelectric power.

Now we see the windmills installed in that state in lieu of the dam are killing birds---the Wanker Class want them removed.

Meanwhile we are giving away our wonderful energy resources for next to nothing.

Funny about that.

According to the CSIRO about 25 times better:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj4n7z764...

So better to burn it if it can be captured.

Have decided to keep both gas and electricity. Gas for the cooktop and hot water. Gas not subject to blackouts (gasouts ...??) so can always cook and bathe. But with two energy sources you are paying for two distribution costs.

Western Australia insisted on guaranteed supply of a proportion of gas produced for that state and that should have been done for all of Australia.

A few years ago spent quite an amount of time wandering around the streets and powerlines trying to track down a radio interference problems which was coming from old insulators and the like.
Used a shortwave radio and simple loop aerial.

Looking at infrastructure closely was shocked to see cheap rusted black iron nuts and bolts and dilapidated infrastructure everywhere. One large power transfromer on a wooden frame looked as though the whole thing was going to collapse onto the ground in the next strong wind.

The area I live in is a old area built in WW2, my house is gas heating, hot water and cooking. The house has a reverse cycle air conditioner but rarely run it. In winter time very much prefer the glow of the gas heater.

To transform my house to all electric everything plus a heavy duty outlet for charging a battery electric auto would require a complete rewire of every single cable in the house and more likely than not, a complete new power box.

I look at the skimpy mains lead in cables from the powerlines to my house which is the same as all houses in this area. Along with the old powerlines, power poles,transformers etc.

If everyone turned on their electric car chargers, electric stoves and hot water/ airconditioner reckon the transformer in this street sitting on its wooden frame for a start would explode.

If all the old houses were converted to all electric and not fully rewired and then subjected to the extra power loads there would be fires everywhere.

Not to forget a blackout in winter where here temperatures can often fall to -3C and even -8C at times.

Would be chilly in a all electric house in a blackout to say the least.

Me, will stick with my gas appliances for a long, long time.

So in reality our homes are becoming less energy efficient! Take a look at what happened in Texas and South Australia a few years back. The grid went down and people died.
My wife and I live in a lovely house in Canberra with no heating or cooling .

I wish you luck Simplex. As for me, I now fear for the knock on the door and being told I must dispose of my wood heater and gas bottle cooking and switch to all electric immediately----planet saving, climate crisis, bullsh*t bullsh*t bullsh*t is legislation.

My biggest objection is that a small mob of good-for-nothing individuals embedded in Europe are now dictating to the world how we must use our own bloody resources.

Worst still, we seem to have a surplus of totally gutless politicians who will not stand up for us. A terrible scene unfolding for all.

Its wonderful, here we are demonising coal, gas, & wood, and everything that goes with farming just demonstrating this is the lucky country: Lucky if lasts much longer.
It seems that privatisation is one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated and climate change is next. Do consider the Sahara Desert and the Middle East in Biblical times. And more recently a map compiled in 1513 by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. That shows the actual "terra firma" Antarctica with no ice. To top it off one Big Glacier in Canada was noted to be receding in 1850. So its one great soleless money making & industry destroying con.
Typical of Australian Bureaucracy and Government, if anything works it will kill it and if its totally irrational and has been proven world wide to be a dud, its a must have.
It has been noted now by the UN finally that the world and Australia in particular are basically raping the worlds resources. Of particular interest in the name of greed noted in part by UN and spruiked by me, is that the human populations growth rate is unsustainable and the construction of solar farms in particular and especially around here, is destroying thousands of acres of ground needed to produce food as is building thousands of housing estates on it. There will be a point of starvation as you can only import so much, before it all ceases.
All then that an enemy has to do is sink ships & blockade to starve people to death. A proven method for Eons.
There is also work: I have always said that the system is aimed at penalising anyone who wants to get on if you can get an education leading to a decent pay rate, or you are demonised farmer which we are running out of. You are taxed to the hilt, have the profiteers running you super & just become capitalist bourgeois to be scorned & trolled.
I did claim the welfare system was corrupt as was the aged care. Now I have two Royal Commissioners, who have come to that same conclusion.
Countries stuffed.

Simplex
your comment reminded me of a situation I was in nearly 25 years ago when I started my first day at a petrol station in Tamworth. A ten year old boy was kicking his soccer ball around the forecourt and managed to kick it up High enough to hit the power lines at the top of the pole. This actually brought the lines down onto the forecourt ( live) and we needed to get the linesman out to fix it ( the servo was still running lol ) . When the linesman inspected the job they found the pole was about to come down by itself so we spent most of the day replacing the power pole and lines.

That was around the time the NSW Government stole the county councils, merged and corporatised them and sacked linesmen and other workers.

I just heard from one of the electricians here that the Grid in Canberra CBD is already overloaded by a extra 15 volts due to the huge uptake of solar panels. He said things are already breaking due to overvoltage.

Voltage and current peaks have always been a problem on local distribution networks. The bottom line is, local distribution networks are not designed to take feeds from anywhere except the transmission grids.

There is no way to tell the Greenies that though, as none of them are engineers.