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THE PROBLEM
THE AFFORDABILITY CRISIS
Families are struggling to keep up with constant rate hikes, which force them to choose between paying for groceries, medications, or utility bills. Twenty-five percent of households are now behind on utility bill payments.
LOBBYING AND INFLUENCE EFFORTS
Utilities are charging customers for corporate branding and political influence efforts, including misleading advertisements and skyboxes in sports stadiums and arenas they can use for lobbying.
METHANE UTILITY PROFITEERING
Methane utility regulators across the country have accepted rate hikes more than twice those of years prior — and for-profit utilities are using those cost increases to reward corporate executives and Wall Street shareholders.
HOUSEHOLDS ARE STRUGGLING
As utility rates continue to increase, households are struggling to keep up with rising bills. According to one estimate, from November 2023 to November 2024, a quarter of adults reported they could not pay at least one energy bill within the previous year. Households shouldn’t have to struggle to pay for energy to heat their homes or cook their food just so utilities can take that money and spend it on corporate branding, luxury lifestyle expenditures, influence efforts, and lobbying. Utilities must be held accountable for their profiteering off the backs of ratepayers and acts of corporate corruption.
WALL STREET SHAREHOLDERS ARE PROFITING OFF HOUSEHOLDS STRUGGLING TO PAY SKYROCKETING METHANE GAS UTILITY BILLS
When households in the U.S. pay for their gas bill, gas should be the only thing they pay for. Instead, investor-owned utility companies are passing on the costs of lobbying, corporate branding, advertising, lawsuits, and luxury lifestyle expenses onto customer rates. While for-profit utility corporations are padding executive and employee benefits like country clubs and massages, customers are pushed up against a wall — forced to choose between paying their utility bill or other basic needs like groceries or medications.
CORPORATE CORRUPTION AND ABUSE
Utilities and energy corporations are often caught misusing customer funds for lobbying efforts or to hide wrongdoing.
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CALIFORNIA: Just last year, the Public Advocate’s Office in California found SoCalGas charged ratepayers nearly $30 million from 2019 to 2023 to fund lobbying efforts against efficiency policies — policies that would lower energy costs and help secure healthier, more resilient homes and buildings.
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MARYLAND: Utility company Potomac Edison admitted to wrongfully charging ratepayers nearly $1.7 million to fund lobbying, bribery, and corporate advertising.
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OHIO: In 2020, FirstEnergy and its affiliates were involved in a bribery case, funneling millions of dollars to four 501(c)(4) organizations who then donated $60M to Political Action Committees and, in turn, secured a $1 billion ratepayer-funded bailout for unprofitable nuclear and coal plants.
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ILLINOIS: Last year, Peoples Gas in Chicago requested a rate increase from state regulators, including expenses for memberships to social and country clubs.
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WASHINGTON, D.C: Washington Gas attempted to influence local elections against electrification policies in 2022. Because employees were not registered as lobbyists, it is unclear whether or not this influence spending was funded by shareholders or ratepayers.
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CALIFORNIA: SoCalGas was fined nearly $10 million and ordered to reimburse customers for money it inappropriately used on advocacy work from 2018 to 2021.
WE PAY, THEY PROFIT
For-profit gas corporations are earning lavish returns for CEOs and shareholders by charging customers to grow and maintain the aging system of methane gas pipelines under our feet.
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Customers are charged to replace thousands of miles of aging, leaky pipelines, costing up to $6 million per mile or more. These pipeline programs often go woefully over budget.
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In 2011, Peoples Gas launched a pipeline replacement program in Chicago. The $2 billion project is years behind schedule and over budget — today, it is only 38% complete and has spent $11 billion. Researchers estimate that Peoples Gas will spend another $12.8 billion to complete the project, leaving customers to pay for the program for the next 75 years.
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To recruit new customers, methane gas corporations will let new households connect to the system “for free” under “allowances” — but in reality, the existing customer base is paying to hook their neighbors up to the gas system for free.
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In California, allowances for residential customers range from $1,700 to $2,700 and are calculated based on the additional revenue the utility expects to receive from each gas appliance installed by the new customer (according to a 2021 report).
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In New York, utilities are statutorily required by Public Service Law to provide at least 100 feet of pipeline to new residential customers for free.
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In Colorado, allowances range from $550 to $1,400 based on an “average embedded cost” formula that approximates a new customer’s contribution to sharing the fixed costs of the existing gas system.
DISINFORMATION
Gas corporations have been hiding the risks of burning methane gas in homes for half a century, and they’re using customer money to try to pull the wool over their eyes.
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Gas utilities use customer funds to advertise their product, including mischaracterizations of their product as “clean” and “sustainable,” resulting in a lawsuit.
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Worse, utilities have also directly advertised to kids by distributing misleading, propaganda-filled coloring books to schools.
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The methane gas industry and its members have actively concealed the risks of gas stove pollution from the public for decades, even going as far as to use the same tactics, notorious PR firms, and researchers as Big Tobacco to confuse the science. This left a generation of households in the dark about the invisible health threat in their homes.
NW Natural became the first gas corporation to be added to a climate accountability lawsuit, which alleges the utility misled the public about the climate risks of methane.
POLLUTING THE AIR, INDOORS AND OUTSIDE
Utilities should work to provide customers with the most affordable, healthy, and safe clean energy options — but that’s the opposite of what methane gas utilities are doing.
Methane often leaks from pipelines and indoor piping, creating risks of explosions and releasing pollutants such as the carcinogen benzene into the air even before it’s burned. When combusted inside homes — in furnaces for heating, on stoves for cooking, or in water heaters to warm water — the pollution released includes carbon monoxide, benzene, and asthma-linked nitrogen dioxide that pollute indoor air. The pollution also includes unhealthy nitrogen oxides, particulate pollution, and ozone that make air unhealthy outdoors. Moreover, methane gas heating equipment is a significant source of greenhouse gases that build up in the atmosphere and trap heat, worsening climate change.
Instead of doubling down on expensive new methane gas pipelines in order to extract more profit from consumers, utilities should be supporting customers in improving their homes with state-of-the-art efficient electric appliances like heat pumps, induction cooktops, and heat pump water heaters.
HARMING OUR HEALTH AND CAUSING DISEASE
No parent should have to watch a child struggle to breathe, but gas-burning home heating equipment and appliances are making childhood — and adult — asthma worse. Multiple credible peer-reviewed studies show that the toxic pollutants released by burning methane gas cause and exacerbate a wide variety of life-threatening health problems, including asthma, cancer, early childhood development, and dementia, as well as negative impacts on maternal and fetal health, including lower birth weights.
These health effects can be devastating for individuals and families — and they also have society-wide impacts, causing billions in economic damages each year in healthcare costs, lost workdays, and more.
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