Natural Gas

Conversation with the Gas Technology Institute’s Mike Rutkowski and Bill Liss about the white paper “Gas and Electricity Storage Systems.”

“Some of those goals include delivering 60% renewable or zero-carbon energy to California electric consumers by 2030 at SDG&E and delivering 20% RNG to core customers by 2030 at SoCalGas.”

“Over eighty percent of our customers want us to be pursuing renewable natural gas, to be working on solutions that balance affordability and our climate objectives.”

“We’re going to have to tailor solutions and blend them in a way that’s going to meet the needs of communities, make sure our customers are not left behind, and we have equitable outcomes.”

“Carbon neutrality is another way we’ve set ourselves apart. A couple of years ago when we set the goal to become carbon neutral by 2030 in our operations, we were the first to set such an early date for full neutrality.”

“A bipartisan Natural Gas Innovation Act we supported was ultimately passed. That provided a framework for the Minnesota PUC to address innovations in natural gas service, like RNG, carbon sequestration, hydrogen, and whatever technology comes next.”

There has never been more urgency to align gas utility planning and regulation with state and federal climate policies.

The Asia Gas Partnership is a joint initiative with NARUC and USEA designed to strengthen regulatory frameworks to encourage public-private partnerships involving government and industry representatives among natural gas sectors in U.S. and Indo-Pacific countries.

“We thought about ourselves as a provider of thermal energy. If we thought about the power of geothermal from a utility scale, we could see real potential value.”

The gas utility investor is put in a different position with electrification than under all prior stranded cost experience where the enterprise continues in business.