We know we need to get off "natural" gas and move to clean electricity — for the climate, for our health and for community safety. But across the country, gas utilities continue to sink billions of dollars every year into digging up and replacing old pipelines. Regulators have largely rubberstamped these programs, despite rapidly escalating costs and evidence that they were
doing next to nothing to reduce the amount of methane leaking from the pipeline system.
But there's been good news on this front in recent months — regulators in
Chicago and
Washington DC recently denied efforts by Peoples Gas and Washington Gas to raise rates to pay for pipeline replacement costs and demanded more transparency into ballooning costs. At a time when we should be helping people electrify, these programs raise bills and lock us into methane gas for decades to come.