David Pomerantz, executive director of the utility watchdog Energy and Policy Institute has an opinion piece in today’s New York Times. He is focused on the USA but similar comments could be made about Canada. Excerpts from Pomerantz:

To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we have to make two big transitions at once: First, we have to generate all of our electricity from clean sources, like wind turbines and solar panels, rather than power plants that run on coal and methane gas. Second, we have to retool nearly everything else that burns oil and gas — like cars, buses and furnaces that heat buildings — to run on that clean electricity.

These changes are underway, but their speed and ultimate success depend greatly on one kind of company: the utilities that have monopolies to sell us electricity and gas.

But around the country, utility companies are using their outsize political power to slow down the clean energy transition, and they are probably using your money to do it. . .

In doing so, they are conscripting their customers into an unknowing army of millions of small-dollar donors to prolong the era of dirty energy. . .

They will support a clean energy transition only if it happens exclusively on their terms and at their pace — a stance at odds with the scope and urgency of the herculean task of decarbonizing our electric grid. . .

Most electric utilities view distributed energy — technologies owned by customers that generate electricity in smaller amounts — as a threat to their business. 

One corporate greenwasher in British Columbia is Fortis.

Writing for The Tyee, Michelle Gamage examined Fortis claims about the fossil gas it provides more than a million customers in British Columbia:

FortisBC ads present the product as an environmentally friendly energy source and feature laughing families cooking over gas appliances together. And FortisBC presents its product, a fossil fuel, as a key part of the global energy transition towards a lower carbon economy.

Global authorities like the International Energy Agency and UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have said we need to stop building out fossil fuel infrastructure and radically scale back fossil fuel use. Greenwashing muddies that goal.

‘Natural gas’ is as natural as natural peanut butter.

“Natural gas” is an oxymoron. Sustainable home designer Edgar Dearden, a chemical engineer,  says. “The word ‘natural’ hooks them. They think, ‘I buy natural peanut butter, natural honey and natural gas — they’re all the same thing.” The oil and gas industry embraced the term “natural gas” in the 1930s but calling it “fossil gas” is a more accurate description of the product, Dearden says.

Sticking with ‘natural gas’ is better than switching to hydroelectric power

FortisBC is a near monopoly — it supplies 95 per cent of the fossil gas used in B.C. So why does it need to advertise? “They’re competing against electrification — that’s their only competition,” Dearden says. FortisBC is part of the North American Consortium to Combat Electrification which brings together 15 utilities with the mission to “create effective, customizable marketing materials to fight the electrification/anti-natural gas movement.”

 Gas absorption heat pumps use renewable energy

The “renewable energy” the gas-powered heat pump uses is referring to the temperature of the outside air that the heat pump pulls inside, not the fossil fuel source that powers the appliance. “You don’t need a PhD in building emissions reductions to know that advertising gas-powered heat pumps as using renewable energy is false advertising,” [Wilderness Committee staffer Peter] McCartney says. “I don’t know how they do it with a straight face.”

In the future, ‘renewable natural gas’ will mostly come from food scraps

“FortisBC tends to use ‘renewable’ and ‘low-carbon gas’ interchangeably with biomethane when they’re not the same thing,” McCartney says. A FortisBC report in 2021 showed 0.3 per cent of its fuel comes from “low carbon gas, namely biomethane,”

Customers who pay for ‘renewable natural gas’ are burning ‘renewable natural gas’ in their homes

But customers who buy into this program don’t actually get to burn renewable gas in their homes, McCartney says. Biomethane is supplied to FortisBC customers through “notional supply,” where the biomethane is added to the general gas supply and then all customers receive around one per cent biomethane and 99 per cent fossil gas, Dearden says.

Biomethane is carbon neutral

United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2018, “It is inaccurate to automatically consider or assume biomass used for energy is ‘carbon neutral,’ even in cases where the biomass is thought to be produced sustainably.” There are no other reliable sources that say biomethane is carbon neutral,

 The 100-year Global Warming Potential is a good way to measure greenhouse gas effects

But this measurement hides methane’s global warming impact because methane has a lifetime of 20 years, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. After 20 years methane degrades into carbon dioxide with much lower global warming potential. Since it contributes most to warming in its first 20 years, the impacts are hidden with the 100-year timeline. On a 100-year timeline, methane has a GWP 27 to 30 times more potent than that of CO2. On a 20-year scale it has a GWP of 81 to 83 times than that of CO2,

Rebates on fossil gas burning appliances are a good way to help customers reduce emissions

Climate Emergency Unit’s Klein notes how 11 months ago the province’s CleanBC roadmap said it would ban rebates on fossil gas appliances, but the government still links to FortisBC rebates on its Better Homes BC website. “Here we are a year later and they’re shilling for them, they’re not just not banned,” he says. “It’s unfathomable.”

Fossil gas appliances save customers money

FortisBC talks a lot about how burning fossil gas is cheaper than electrifying. Its webpage for fossil gas heat pumps notes the appliance can “help your organization save money,” “put less pressure on your bottom line” and how “moving to an all-electric system can be costly” and will require more “building upgrades” than if you stick with fossil gas. As Canada works towards having net-zero emissions by 2050 it will also likely pass new regulations prohibiting the use of fossil gas burning appliances, Klein says. “So each new building tying into gas will be facing a $10,000 to $30,000 retrofit in the future when we realize we gotta stop using gas.”

Gas stoves are better than electric stoves

But being exposed to fossil gas isn’t safe, says Dr. Larry Barzelai. Most of the recorded adverse health impacts happen when pregnant people live near hydraulic fracturing sites, where babies are more likely to be born prematurely and underweight. Pregnant people living near fracking sites also have higher rates of chemicals in their urine which are linked to childhood cancer. A U.S. study found kids living near fracking sites also have an increased risk for childhood leukaemia.

 Exporting Canadian fossil fuels helps other countries reduce their fossil fuel use

As Canada ramps up its climate commitments and starts working towards capping how many emissions can be produced domestically, FortisBC is busy building out its export facilities so it can sell fossil gas overseas — which gets it a free pass because Canada doesn’t count emissions on exports, McCartney says. Building new fossil gas infrastructure locks us into using it for decades to come to pay off the construction cost, McCartney says. This means governments will be less willing to explore zero-emissions energy sources like green hydrogen made from renewable energy.