Clean air advocates in the Australian Capital Territory are speaking out against a recent ACT Legislative Assembly vote.
An investigation into wood heater policy in the ACT
In January 2023, the Office of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment in the Australian Capital Territory issued a damning report detailing the harm that wood heaters cause in the ACT.
The report concluded that current wood heater policies in the ACT are ineffective and are not protecting the public. The Commissioner recommended that wood heaters be phased out in Canberra’s suburbs, and outlined steps the government should take towards that goal.
A phaseout pledged by 2045
Following this, the ACT government pledged to phase out wood heaters in built-up areas of the ACT by 2045. At the time, residents were dismayed that the government planned to take over 20 years to do this, but at least there was a commitment to take action.
The ACT government reneges on its commitment
Now in 2025, the ACT government has turned around and shown that it apparently has no actual plan to follow through on the important public health measure it committed to before.
On September 4, 2025, the ACT Legislative Assembly voted down a motion that, among other measures, called for the Government to begin a community consultation on the wood heater phaseout plan.
According to the Conservation Council ACT Region:
The ACT Minister for Climate Change and the Environment, Suzanne Orr, downplayed the polluting impacts of wood heaters, and minimised the Government’s previous announcements on a commitment for a phase-out, saying that it was only agreed to ‘in principle’. She also said that an agreement to ban wood heaters in Tuggeranong, where smoke impacts are the worst, was also only made ‘in principle’.
Executive Director of the Conservation Council ACT Region, Simon Copland, said:
The Government’s vote yesterday shows they have no interest in removing this dirty, old, technology from our city. It is absolutely appalling that in face of all of the evidence of the harms of wood heaters, the Government has decided phasing them out is too difficult and not important enough. The Government has chosen to continue polluting our environment and inflicting harm on thousands of Canberrans.
The advocacy group Clean Air Canberra stated in a press release (PDF) that they condemned the ACT Government’s continuing lack of action to combat residential wood heater pollution. According to their spokesperson Dr Murray May, the ACT Legislative Assembly’s vote demonstrated that it’s not committed to the plan it promised Canberra’s residents.
Dr May further stated:
Leading Australian environmental health researchers and public health physicians have already estimated that as many as 63 people die prematurely per year in Canberra from exposure to wood heater pollution.
The ACT Government’s own figures show wood heaters are the largest single source of air pollution in Canberra. In recommending the phasing out of wood heaters, the previous ACT Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment, Dr Sophie Lewis, said wood heaters are the major source of PM2.5 air pollution in Tuggeranong, contributing to the majority of daily exceedances of national standards at the Monash air quality monitoring station.
It is well documented that such fine particulate matter can cause lung cancer, as well as a range of other conditions including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, stroke and can worsen asthma. It has even been linked to diabetes, adverse pregnancy outcomes and neurological diseases.
Everyone has a right to a clean, healthy and safe environment including the right to breathe clean air without their health being endangered by breathing in the carcinogens and fine particulate matter from residential wood smoke pollution. Quite simply, there is no safe level of particulate air pollution and the health costs are large.
The ACT Government’s lack of action on its decision to phase out wood heaters in suburban Canberra by 2045 is retrograde in an era of increasing climate change, and further jeopardises the lives of vulnerable Canberra residents, such as older adults, children, and anyone with pre-existing heart or lung conditions.
