Impact Priority 4 (IP4) Air Quality – Report on wood heater smoke project stakeholder workshop held on 12 Dec 2022

In Australia, an average of 10% of households use wood as their main source of heating. This ranges from less than 5% in some capital cities, to more than 50% in many country towns. Wood heaters produce extremely large pollution emissions relative to the amount of energy they provide. Smoke from wood heaters causes numerous health impacts and creates a major health and economic burden for Australia.

To explore this issue, an online workshop was held by the Wood Heater Smoke project team from the Air Quality stream of the National Environmental Science Program. Multiple stakeholders, including local government, researchers, state agencies and advocacy groups, attended the workshop to hear talks from experts in the field and to discuss potential interventions to reduce exposures to wood heater smoke.

The range of discussions held at the workshop, along with the survey results from attendees, highlighted that though there is a high level of interest in wood heater smoke interventions, there are a lot of practical barriers that exist when attempting to address the problem. However, the case studies from New Zealand and the panel discussion, together with problem solving discussions in breakout groups, showed that it is a problem that can be addressed, and that there are practical steps forward that can be taken to improve air quality.

The next steps for this project will be following up with local government stakeholders with the intent of co-designing interventions to be trialled as part of the ongoing project.