Aquatic centres in Sydney’s Blacktown City council area are being heated by new-generation heat pumps, reducing the council’s reliance on natural gas at a time when gas prices are going through the roof.

The pumps have been installed at the Charlie Lowles Leisure Centre Emerton and Blacktown Leisure Centre Stanhope.

“Due to sharp rises in the cost of natural gas, Council explored avenues to reduce this usage through the installation of heat pumps, which use a quarter of the energy used by natural gas for heating,” said Blacktown City Mayor, Tony Bleasdale.

“The installation of the heat pump at Stanhope has led to a 60% reduction in our natural gas usage for pool heating, which is equivalent to 3.1 gigajoules of gas each year.”

Cr Bleasdale added that the project is part of the Council’s commitment to achieving net-zero emissions by 2030, the strategy for which includes:

• Engaging a 100% renewable electricity contract, which will commence in January 2025
• Installing 1.4 megawatts of roof-top solar panels
• Replacing old building lights and streetlights with LED lights
• More energy-efficient air-conditioning units
• Replacing gas boilers with electric heat pumps

The Council’s Director of City Assets, Paul Belz, said its three main leisure centres accounted for 80% of the Council’s natural gas consumption in 2021-22.

“We identified that pool hall ventilation was the main contributing factor to our high natural gas usage at Emerton and Stanhope, and worked with the manufacturer to design and install a new heat pump that linked with existing systems,” Mr Belz said.

“These heat pumps have been uniquely designed to extract heat from the surrounding air, process it through a refrigeration cycle and transfer the enhanced heat to the area requiring the heating.”