Xcel Energy’s Journey to Net-Zero for its Gas Distribution Business
Jeff Lyng is Xcel Energy Vice President, External Affairs and Policy, and Chief Sustainability Officer. He is responsible for developing strategies and policies that advance the company’s vision for providing 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2050 while maintaining reliability and keeping customer bills as low as possible.
Lauren Quillian is Xcel Energy Senior Director for External Affairs & Policy. She is a strategic energy leader shaping policies and partnerships that advance Xcel Energy’s clean energy transition across its eight-state footprint and at the federal level.
Nearly every news cycle highlights challenges facing the U.S. electric grid. Yet far less attention is paid to the ways leading natural gas distribution utilities are managing sustainability, reliability, and affordability to heat homes and businesses. In many ways, we are also at a frontier moment in natural gas distribution decarbonization.
Xcel Energy’s experience as a leading dual-fuel utility that operates in cold climates offers a window into what it takes to reduce emissions associated with natural gas use. As a company, we are advancing a suite of emissions-reduction strategies tailored to cold-climate reliability on the path to our 2050 vision to deliver net-zero natural gas service for our 2.2 million natural gas customers. As this article describes, the transition is arguably more challenging than that of the electric system.
This article provides insight into our commitments, lessons learned, and policy priorities shaping the path ahead. While there is no single national pathway for gas decarbonization, exploring the leadership stories of dual-fuel companies provides useful context in identifying solutions to drive progress.