Tag: politics

Getting Off Gas, Block by Block

Electrifying homes and businesses one at a time can be hard, and leave people behind. What if we could instead liberate entire neighborhoods from reliance on natural gas? A few utilities are taking baby steps to do just that, helping customers go all-electric en masse so it can start dismantling their gas grids.

Since 2018 San Francisco-based PG&E has been finding spots where it can make a buck by capping dodgy gas pipes rather than replacing them. After nipping pipes around the edges of its gas grid, removing pipes that serve just a handful of customers each, PG&E is now preparing to lop off some sizeable branches. The first large test moving forward targets 32,000 feet of gas pipes at a California State University campus, perched atop coastal dunes at a former army base north of Monterey. PG&E will ditch the pipes by equipping 600 student housing units with electric heat pumps, stoves and water heaters.

Such ‘strategic decommissioning’ of gas grids is not just a way to accelerate decarbonization. It’s simultaneously combating energy injustice. Without immediate reductions in spending on gas infrastructure, disadvantaged customers will be left paying for oversized gas grids as more affluent households go all-electric and quit the system. As Building Decarbonization Coalition executive director Panama Bartholomy told me: “Every time we put a new natural gas pipe in the ground, we’re knowingly putting a financial time bomb in the ground.”

Read my feature for Sierra Magazine, Getting Off Gas: Block By Block

A paired Sierra news piece profiles the pioneering geothermal network that Boston-based Eversource Energy and Massachusetts climate action group HEET started up this summer. Water pipes running under streets in Framingham, MA serve as the system’s circulatory system, democratizing access to 90 geothermal bore holes. Since August a fire hall, school, gas station, cabinet shop, city-run housing units for the elderly and disabled, and 22 single-family homes and duplexes have been heating and cooling by exchanging heat with the clay and rock 600 to 700 feet below the city. The super high efficiency of such thermal energy networks should reduce peak summer and winter electricity demand, slashing the need for new transmission lines by 33 percent according to a 2023 US national labs study. They also offer gas utilities and workers a post-combustion raison d’etre, potentially turning energy transition obstacles into a driving force for building decarbonization.

Read my Sierra news piece, Geothermal Helps Communities Get Off Fossil Gas

The Sierra articles are the 2nd and 3rd instalments in Tapping Off, a reporting project supported by the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Fund for Environmental Journalism. Part 1, published by The Tyee, profiled Washington state utility Puget Sound Energy’s use of customer electrification to put the brakes on gas expansion.

Read Part 1 online @The Tyee

by pfairley

“They Had to Break the Law to Try to Save Humanity”

Finalist, 2025 Digital Publishing Awards

The climate clock ticks toward midnight, yet US fossil fuel output keeps setting records and Canada goes on chopping Old Growth forests. Under such circumstances it’s hardly surprising that many climate activists have turned to civil disobedience, blocking highways and attacking masterworks to amplify their message. What is surprising is that courts seem to be listening.

My exposé for Vancouver’s premier public-interest news outlet, The Tyee, explores one case where precedent-setting judicial compassion could embolden activists across Canada to ratchet up pressure on governments.

In this courtroom drama a pair of climate activists deploy the ‘defence of necessity’, arguing that they should be excused for blockading highways, airports, banks and ports because the dire threat posed by climate change left them no legal alternative. My exposé explores the moral and practical considerations that go into determining when such premeditated lawbreaking should be legally tolerated — and whether it might actually strengthen the rule of law.

The result is “powerfully informative” according to one informed reviewer. “You give readers a deep and clear look at all the moving parts of this defence of necessity and the profound issues it raises – but you do that as a master storyteller, so it is gripping, easygoing, and compelling.”

UPDATE: On May 3, 2024 Judge Ronald Lamperson ruled that the activists’ civil disobedience did not qualify for the necessity defense. You can read why in my day-of news filing for The Tyee.

by pfairley