Advancing System & Climate Resilience Initiatives

Dear AESP Advancing System & Climate Resilience Initiatives Topic Committee members,

As we approach the end of summer, it's time to regroup as a topic committee for our next quarterly meeting. Per a member's request, we're going to spend this next meeting talking all about natural gas (or lack thereof?). When seeking future discussion topics, Brett Feldman (Customer Energy Management Manager at Rhode Island Energy) proposed: "One thing that has come up in our Rhode Island EE planning process is stakeholders wanting to phase out gas EE incentives, from a climate perspective. Not sure if that has been discussed here, but certainly something we are interested in and I know some other states have already moved on." In addition to hearing from Brett on the issue, my colleague Erin Kempster (Opinion Dynamics' Director of Decarbonization) will be joining us to provide a national perspective on the tricky natural gas issue. 

Please join us on September 27^th from 10-11 am PST (1-2 EST) to discuss all things gas! We'd especially love to hear some perspectives from dual fuel utilities. Some examples we'd love to hear from members: Are you still working on gas efficiency at your organization? Or are you focused on fuel-switching electrification? Or is your organization not allowed to promote or incent fuel-switching electrification? Is natural gas efficiency still a critical lever in your C&I work, where electrification can be more challenging? What about "clean" / renewable natural gas? How do GHG goals impact your work as it relates to gas efficiency vs. electrification?

Meeting invite via Teams. And please forward the invite to anyone you know (in your organization or others) that might be interested in this conversation or that has some expertise to lend to the discussion. Please email me at [email protected] if you did not receive the Teams invite.

Looking forward to what I'm sure will be a gas!