Two-thirds of the fracked gas that flows into New York is delivered by gas utilities and burned in buildings for heating, hot water, cooking, clothes drying, and industrial processes. This gas combustion, in turn, accounts for the largest source of greenhouse gasses in New York State when the methane that leaks along the utility pipeline system is taken into account. New York’s Public Service Commission holds an enormous amount of power to either protect the status quo of this system or to set into place policies and plans to decarbonize the building sector and phase out gas. The Commission makes overarching policy decisions that impact all gas utilities in “generic proceedings” and approves the budgets and plans for each individual utility through “rate cases.” AGREE intervenes in both of these types of regulatory proceedings with the goals of stopping investments in gas infrastructure and reducing gas sales through adoption of renewable alternatives.
Learn more about rate cases from the video below: