Gas Networks 2050 Customer Forum seven, held was held on Saturday 9 September, and was our last customer forum for the year.

Customer Forum Six, held online, allowed us to clarify and challenge some of the recommendations previously made, through hearing from three key experts.

These three experts represented different future energy system viewpoints (agnostic, electrification and renewable gas) and presented challenge questions to customers.

In Forum Seven we asked our customers to consider all their learnings so far from both key experts, and from Jemena, and make some tough decisions and trade-offs when it came to thinking about the future of our gas network.

We asked customers to check on their votes from earlier forums using a sliding L scale of ‘love it’ to ‘loathe it’ on seven key areas such as renewable gas and vulnerable customers.

Customers finalised their recommendations and the reasons behind them and presented this back to Jemena. These recommendations will form the basis of a Draft Plan that will be submitted to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) for review early next year.

As Michael one of our customers said about these recommendations: “We’re putting our thumb down and saying here’s where our values land, here’s what we want to see reflected in Jemena’s report, and I’m interested to see what happens, and what the future of Jemena is after that.”

It was lovely to hear that several of our customers have made strong connections and friendships over the course of the time they have spent together, and they appreciate the difficult and challenging time ahead of us as we transition to net zero.

Sean another customer who participated, agrees: “I think it’s been a fairly long process, nearly a year, since November 2022 when we all met in North Sydney.

At the beginning of that process there was a lot of unknowns that we had to take on board, in respect of what Jemena did and what the future was for renewables, both for gas and for electricity.

I’ve learned a lot and made a number of good contacts and a number of great friendships.”

Thank you so much to everyone who attended, and we look forward to reconvening for the very last time with this same customer group to seek their opinions on our 2025 – 2030 Draft Plan for Forum Eight in early March 2024.