reaction to Charlottesville Gas Decarbonization Study Listening Session
Editors note: this post reflects the reaction of a Livable Cville co-chair after participating in a Charlottesville Gas Decarbonization Study Listening Session. See the city website for information on additional sessions. Please see Community Climate Collaborative (C3) for additional background on Charlottesville Gas, including policy recommendations that C3 and Livable Cville collaborated on in October, 2023.
On July 9, 2024, I attended the first of three planned Listening Sessions. It was held via Zoom. I’m going to briefly explain how this process for community engagement is deeply flawed and why you should still participate.
First, you should still participate because this is the process available to provide input on how important decarbonization is and why the city should aggressively pursue decarbonization via incentives for demand reduction (e.g., energy efficiency for all households), supporting electrification of gas appliances, and making contingency plans for reductions in natural gas plans (by both large commercial customers and consumers). Also, although decommissioning is not currently allowed by state law, that could change in the future, so the city should keep its options open for that future possibility.
Second, I acknowledge that community engagement is really hard to get right! Nonetheless, the current process is deeply flawed because it is not designed to collect input about tradeoffs among realistic options for decarbonization. Instead, it appears designed to attract current Charlottesville gas customers so they can attest to why they don’t want any changes in service. For example, here are the labels of the three breakout rooms where participants had an opportunity for input:
Screen capture from presentation slides.
What do you notice? For starters, none of them are about how to decarbonize. Instead, the focus is on barriers to decarbonization.
Another challenging aspect of the listening sessions is the complete lack of Q&A. Instead of having experts answer questions, the questions were noted for future inclusion in an FAQ. As such, it wasn’t clear why the listening sessions were needed. The same input could have been gathered with a survey.
Finally, here are the current decarbonization plans provided in the opening slides.
Screen capture from presentation slides.
If you attend, here is feedback you can consider providing on these action items:
The new gas connection fee is a good start but does not adequately reflect the fully loaded costs of providing new service. The fee should be revisited again next year.
Weatherization programs are great! They should be available for all Charlottesville residents (e.g., not limited to gas customers).
Existing rebates for new gas appliances should be eliminated. Other rebates should be made available to all Charlottesville residents (e.g., not limited to gas customers).
Carbon offsets are not effective in reducing GHG emissions. Instead, that money should be directed towards gas demand reduction (e.g., #2 and #3 above, as well as electrification incentives).
Tree planting programs are great! But how much energy-savings does the tree program provide? It’s likely a really small drop in a really big bucket!
These steps alone do not align Charlottesville Gas with the city’s climate goals. More, far bolder, action is needed to accomplish that.
