Getting off Gas: Improving Fossil Gas Regulation Now for a Post-fossil Fuel Future
The United States’ extensive fossil gas infrastructure is characterized by greenhouse gas emissions, methane leaks, and explosions that imperil lives, disproportionately affect the health and well-being of marginalized communities, and enable the global climate crisis. These issues are exacerbated by a regulatory apparatus distributed among various agencies at different levels of government, a fragmentation that has stymied efforts to protect those most vulnerable to the gas system’s hazards and reduce fossil-gas use.
This report details three key obstacles to the effective policing of the US fossil gas system:
Regulatory Fragmentation. The atomization of the regulatory system structurally privileges fossil fuel interests, leading to the persistent delay or cooptation of climate and safety legislation.
Market Logic. To determine trajectories of repair, decommissioning, and replacement, US gas regulation relies predominantly on market forces and corporate logic, resulting in unequal and unjust consequences.
Misguided Policy. To the limited extent the gas regulatory regime has tried to address the climate crisis, it has done so by focusing on methane emissions, an all-too-narrow approach that could serve to entrench gas infrastructure further.
The only way to address emissions from the gas system completely and ensure safe energy provision is the managed decommissioning of the gas system. We recommend a suite of policies to ensure a managed decommissioning of gas infrastructure and the development of an energy system safe for people and the climate:
- Accountable gas monitoring that directly links gas leaks to gas decommissioning;
- Public ownership of gas systems to ensure a safe transition for both infrastructure and workers;
- Gas bans, the elimination of gas subsidies, and public investment in an electricity system that serves heating needs; and
- Energy systems designed to prioritize not profitability but rather people’s energy needs, appropriate technologies, and the climate crisis.
