Short Wave - The Fight Over The Future Of Natural Gas

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

A growing number of cities are looking at restricting the use of gas in new buildings to reduce climate emissions. But some states are considering laws to block those efforts, with backing from the natural gas industry.Email the show at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, everybody, Maddie Safaya here. And today we've got NPR climate reporter, Dan Charles. Hi, I, Dan. Hi, Maddie. What do you got for us today? We are going places, Maddie. Three different places.

Starting with a city where Jasmine Moore lives and works. I'm the director of sustainability with the city of Lawrence and Douglas County, Kansas. Her job is finding ways for people to, just for instance, Stop burning so much gas and coal and oil. Because last year, the City Commission, in her city, Lawrence, adopted a goal of moving to 100% renewable energy. The intent is that we start to have conversations with our community members, the business community, and chart that path towards 100% renewable. So this would mean things like solar, wind energy, powering everything, like to heat your home, drive your car, cook your food, that kind of stuff. That's right. No more burning fossil fuels, eventually.

Okay. I was about to say. Sounds ambitious, Dan. Well, it is. It caught the attention of some powerful people in the oil and gas industry. Somebody sent me a recording from a conference last fall where they were talking about it. This is Sue Forrester, a vice president at the American Gas Association, talking about what she calls a coordinated attack on fossil fuels. What I really want to impress upon everybody here is don't think this is just a coastal elite issue. issue, we're seeing activity in Columbus, Ohio, Lawrence, Kansas, Detroit. Yeah, I mean, she sounds very concerned.

You know, did these gas companies do something about this, Dan? Well, the state legislature in Kansas is now considering a bill, and it is likely to become law that says no city in Kansas can prevent or discourage people from using natural gas, from their local gas utility to heat their homes. So the state of Kansas is basically attempting to put a law. place to keep cities like Lawrence from reducing the use of fossil fuels. Right, a particular kind of fossil fuel use. And I'm bringing this up because a dozen states now across the country are considering similar laws. It's pretty clear who's behind those proposals, the gas utilities. Practically, every city has one. So today on the show, a big climate battle between cities and states over the future of natural gas. This is Shortwave,

the Daily Science Podcast from NPR. Okay, Dan, let's start at the beginning. Why is this such a big deal? Is it okay if I ask you a personal question first? Yes, Dan, go for it. What keeps your apartment warm? Okay. I know, oh boy, I know our electricity is some mix of renewables,

but I'm pretty sure that our heat is gas. Right. And so many people are in exactly the same situation. About half of the homes and businesses in the country, burn gas for heat in the winter, especially in the cold part of the country. Right. Plus, a lot of people have gas water heaters. This is basically your own little fossil fuel power plant right there in your basement.

And it really adds up between heating, homes and businesses, burning fossil fuels on site, accounts for more than 10% of the whole country's greenhouse emissions. Wow. Okay. All right. And I'm glad we're talking about this because I feel like I remember natural gas has been pitched as this, like, cleaner fuel, like cities, you know, buying buses, running on compressed natural gas, and that's supposed to be like a good thing, question mark?

Well, it is cleaner. It was cleaner than the diesel that those buses were burning. And it's a lot cleaner than coal. But, you know, when you're putting up buildings and installing equipment that's going to be in place for 20, 30, 50 years, maybe cleaner isn't good enough anymore. I'm feeling really bad about this fossil fuel plant. I've got it in my house now, Dan. Guilt about this is not the point. The point is there is an alternative. Another path, at least for new buildings, and also for when a lot of other buildings, you know, need their furnaces replaced. Okay, okay, okay. And I talked to one of the people who's pushing this alternative, Alejandra Mejia Cunningham, with the Natural Resources Defense Council. We're going to have to tackle emissions from pretty much everywhere. The benefit of buildings is that we have the technology. Okay, Dan, what technology are we talking about?

It's got a name. They call it electrification. Well, I like the name. But I do feel like with electricity, I mean, there are greenhouse gas emissions from generating electricity, too, right? Right, absolutely, for now. But the thing is, if your goal is zero greenhouse emissions, burning gas will never get you there. But electricity could if it's coming from places like solar and wind and hydro. which increasingly it is.

Gotcha. So the environmentalists are saying, if you're putting up a new building, making decisions for decades to come, don't lock yourself into burning gas. Give yourself the chance to be zero carbon. Got it. Okay.

But what does that look like, Dan? Well, let's go to our next spot, Salt Lake City. And here we have Tyler Holland, who works with a construction company called Wadman Corporation, and he is going to give us a little audio tour to explain this whole electrification idea. This is our, like, sixth all-electric apartment building that we've done.

John Reed from our member station, KUER, actually recorded this. He was masked and socially distanced. The mic was out on the end of a long pole. Love it, love it. This building's six stories high, still under construction, not many people around. So this is an affordable housing project. Now, in most buildings in Salt Lake City, and really lots of places in the U.S. where it gets cold, there would be a pipe underground going into this building delivering gas to heating furnaces.

But here in this building, there's no gas hookup. It's all electric. Every apartment has an electric heat pump on the wall, which takes care of heating and cooling. Okay, Dan, I feel like I should know this. But what's a heat pump? Ah, heat pumps are basically the key to electrification. They work pretty much like refrigerators. They use compression and expansion of a gas to move heat from outside to inside.

or the other way around. In this case, the heat pumps are capturing heat from the air outside and moving it inside the apartment for heating. And in summertime, they do the opposite. They'll move heat from the inside to the outside. There are also heat pump water heaters. I will tell you from personal experience, they have gotten so much more efficient and they just work better than they used to. Are they really expensive, though, like for big buildings? The machines themselves can be more expensive than, say, a gas furnace or a standard water heater,

which is why Tyler said they only did their first all-electric building because there was this environmentally minded developer give group that insisted on it. Tyler's company thought this is terrible. It's going to cost a lot extra. But once they started working on it, they say it turned out to be cheaper. You eliminate doing gas taps. You eliminate running all those gas. gas lines through your building. So by not putting all that gas infrastructure in there, you're kind of saving money. Right. And now Tyler's company is totally sold on this. They're sharing their

blueprints and budgets with other builders just to show them that it makes sense for business, for the climate, also just for cleaner air. We just want everybody to do it. I mean, it's, it's everybody's air that we're all breathing. Makes my mountain bike ride that much easier. And the basic idea is down the road. This building will have zero green. greenhouse emissions once it's getting that electricity from the sun or the wind or from falling water. Okay, got it. So will we see more building like this around the country? A lot of cities with big climate goals are trying to promote all electric buildings like this. They're really focused on new construction, not so much retrofitting existing buildings.

Nobody's forcing people to tear out their gas furnaces at this point. And Salt Lake City is not considering any formal ban on new gas hookups. Vicki Bennett, who's Director of Sustainability there, says they'd like to try persuasion, you know, incentives, maybe expediting building permits. That's our next step, is exploring. What sort of incentives would be, would make a difference? You know, what would be enough to get them to pay more attention to going to all electric buildings? But there are cities, dozens of them, mostly in California, that have adopted rules that say in one way or another, new buildings cannot get connected. to gas pipelines anymore. So that's what that person from the American Gas Association was talking about, like at the top of the show, the campaign against gas.

Exactly. And that movement reached the third place. We're going to go visit Flagstaff, Arizona, where Nicole Antinopoulos is Director of Sustainability. That was one of our strategies. Could we, say, no new natural gas and new construction? And this is where they run into the backlash. Yeah, I imagine the gas. industry wasn't happy about this. Not really. We have seen some internal documents from a meeting

of the Executive Committee of the American Gas Association last year. An environmental watchdog group that Climate Investigation Center obtained these documents through a public records request. And they show that by late 2019, a group of big gas utilities had already launched a campaign in favor of what they call consumer choice. One of them is Southwest Gas, the biggest gas, the biggest gas provider in Arizona. And in February of 2020, the Speaker of the Arizona State House introduced a bill that makes it illegal for cities in the state to limit gas hookups. Republicans generally supported it. And in Arizona, the law just sailed through past both houses and signed into law within a month. So what does that do to the city of Flagstaff's plans?

Nicole Antonopoulis says it pretty much left them looking for Plan B. It definitely put a huge hurdle in our plans for promoting electrification and fuel switching. Instead of requiring developers to go all-electric, they have to persuade them to, like the approach Utah's taking. And since then, similar bills have passed in three other states, and they're being considered in a dozen more, including Florida, Georgia, a whole bunch of states. Well, so this is my question about the, like, you know, consumers can choose. I mean, are individual consumers actually choosing here, Dan, or is it like the developer kind of choosing for the consumer? It is an interesting conflict. You have these states stepping in, and they're saying on behalf of consumers, although it's also on behalf of the gas suppliers.

Right. No, you cities cannot interfere with the consumer's right to burn gas or the developer's right to build a, you know, a gas burning building. And the cities are saying, just like we have building codes for public safety, we want to enact rules that will help end climate change. And that means no new construction that uses fossil fuels. So they're saying the community is making this choice and we should have the right to choose. Right. I mean, that's what it kind of felt like when we were talking about Kansas way back at the beginning of the episode. It felt like the folks in Lawrence have decided on this goal, which is 100% renewable, you know, which means down the road, gas,

wouldn't be an option. Like, that's the choice. Yeah. I asked Jasmine Moore, the city of Lawrence's director of sustainability, how this would affect her city's plans if it passed. And she said it's kind of hard to tell, but the bill is written very broadly. It prohibits any municipal ordinance that, quote, discriminates against, restricts, limits, or impairs, close quote, the use of a utility. So she's worried that it might even ban city programs that are aimed at promoting energy. efficiency. Right.

Since that would reduce gas use. Wow, that's pretty intense. Then she also said this. No matter what, we'll figure out a way to continue to make progress. She sounds pretty determined. I'll say that. Yes, she does. Okay, Dan Charles.

As always, we appreciate you. Thanks for bringing this to the show. Thank you, Maddie. And I would like to add some special thanks to some people who helped with this episode. Go for it. Matt Abbott, Brandon Cohen, Michael Gartman, Stephen Handy, Diego Rodriguez, Charlie Spatz and Amy Turner. Plus, today's episode was produced by Rebecca Ramirez, edited by Giselle Grayson,

and fact-checked by Rasha Auretti. The audio engineer for this episode was Patrick Murray. I'm Maddie Safaya. Thanks for listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR. The news is about more than what just happened. You need to know why it happened, who made it happen, how it's felt in the communities you care about. NPR's daily news podcast, consider this, gives you all of that, with context, backstory and analysis on a single topic every weekday. It's not just information. It's what the news

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