By Steve Haner
Charlottesville is one of three Virginia municipal governments that still owns and operates a natural gas distribution utility. With the current political hostility to all forms of hydrocarbon energy, the future of that utility is under debate and its customers will soon have a chance to speak up.
The listening sessions follow other stakeholder sessions and a presentation earlier this year to Charlottesville City Council. It included some recommendations about the future of the utility, but notably not any path toward eliminating it. Not yet anyway.
There will be two public comment sessions online, July 9 and 16, and one in-person hearing on August 22. The portal to sign up is here.
The Charlottesville municipal gas utility serves more than 21,500 customers, almost half of them not in the city. It reaches well into Albemarle County, especially along U.S. 250 and U.S. 29. There are 16 industrial users and for some of them gas might be an essential energy source.
More than a year ago, Charlottesville hired an outside consultant, Black and Veatch, to do what it has termed a decarbonization study. In 2019, the city council adopted a formal goal of reducing the city’s own carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 (just five years away now) and achieving “carbon neutrality” by 2050. Carbon neutrality, just as vague a goal as “net zero,” does not mean zero emissions.
Richmond City Council has also gone on record as worried about the climate impact of its own municipal gas utility, with more than 100,000 customers in the city and three surrounding counties. A similar organized decarbonization effort was proposed for Richmond, but if it is underway it is below the radar screen so far. Charlottesville’s transparency is a pleasant contrast.
The final report from Charlottesville’s outside consultant is not expected until later in 2024, according to that presentation to the city council. One of the questions pending is whether and how the city might close down the utility, but a slide in this preliminary report points to hurdles. Slide 24 of the presentation mentioned a required supermajority vote of city council followed by a referendum and limits in state law. Changing either the city charter or that state law would depend on the legislature.
Customer preference is another hurdle. Charlottesville undertook a survey of 303 city and county residents (pages 17-23) and found 46% of them were gas customers. Of those active customers, 94% said “global climate change” is a very serious or somewhat serious problem, but 96% said having gas available was important to them, 51% saying it was extremely important. The headline on the slide calls that “conflicting views.”
Among the gas customers, 51% indicated they were unlikely to voluntarily abandon gas appliances and only 34% were likely or somewhat likely to. Among all respondents, including non-gas customers, that fuel source was considered more energy efficient, more cost efficient and more reliable their either electric service or propane. (A note to the political nerds: the sample was only 5% Republican, so imagine the numbers in other parts of Virginia.)
The city council was told that the number of new gas connections annually has been declining. Removing any incentives traditionally offered to entice new homes or commercial buildings to use gas, or to switch from electricity to gas, is one tactic Charlottesville and others are considering. One of the recommendations in the interim presentation, not fleshed out in detail, is a fee structure that discourages new connections.
A perfectly valid tactic no one should object to is more aggressively finding, fixing or preventing leaks. The atmospheric impact of leaked methane is different (some argue it is worse) than the byproducts of burning methane in a furnace or stove. Even if you aren’t worried about that, the leaked gas is waste and adds to customer cost. The presentation claims Charlottesville’s record with leaks is hugely better than Richmond’s.
In comparison to other municipal utilities examined, Charlottesville’s service is very compact, with 60 customers per mile of gas mains, double the average. So is Richmond’s, with more than 50 customers per mile of mainline.
Charlottesville is more aggressive than many local utilities with incentive programs to encourage more efficient appliances or to lower gas usage in other ways. This report stated Richmond makes no such effort to reduce demand for its gas.
Charlottesville is engaging in offset programs and offset purchases which it claims counteract 25% of the CO2 and methane emissions caused by the gas utility and its customers. What it spends on those overall is not mentioned, except for its program to expand the planting of trees. Slide 29 reports 450 trees planted at $22,500 in cost, resulting in 1.3 million pounds (less than 1,000 tons) of CO2 “sequestered.”
Who can object to planting more trees? If that keeps the activists calm and quiet while the rest of us can keep our gas furnaces and stoves, that is a small price to pay. Let’s all hope that works. But if I cared about maintaining this particular municipal service, I’d get on one of these public hearings. The people who want to kill it will all be there.