New York Lawmakers Want to Put Pipeline Spending on the Map

“My experience in my district is, all of a sudden, they’re digging up the road and you don’t know why it’s happening,” said Assemblymember Emily Gallagher. “There’s not really been any communication, even with us as elected officials, that they’re doing that.”

Now, lawmakers want to make the process more transparent. Gallagher and Senator Kristen Gonzalez are introducing a new bill that would require gas utilities to file annually updated maps of which old pipes they’re planning to replace and when.

State energy regulators would be tasked with publishing the maps and scrutinizing them to identify areas where it might make sense to retire the gas lines in favor of electric alternatives.

Gonzalez said the legislation aims to set “a clear, new tone for how utility companies should be reporting out the work that they’re doing.”

“We just want transparency,” said Kim Fraczek, director of the climate group Sane Energy Project, which is leading the push for the new legislation. “We should have the right to be able to see what they’re spending our money on.”

Recent research has highlighted the growing weight of pipe replacements on New Yorkers’ energy bills. A January white paper by the Future of Heat Initiative, a clean energy–oriented think tank, shows that “delivery” charges now make up three-quarters of New York gas bills. That’s a big change from a few decades ago, when bills were dominated by the cost of the gas itself.

Construction costs — including the profits utilities are allowed to earn on their investments — account for nearly half of delivery charges, the group found, overshadowing other expenses like customer service and taxes.

“We want to make sure that when infrastructure is replaced, it’s actually necessary, and that we’re doing it in the most community-minded manner,” Gallagher said. “This bill is a way to really hold [utilities] accountable and also help us plan for electrification.”

A study published last year by the climate think tank Switchbox found that in some cases, it would cost utilities less to equip all customers in an area with new electric appliances, like heat pumps and stoves, than to replace their gas lines. There are also more modest alternatives to replacing potentially leaky pipes: Larger pipes can be fitted with sleeves, for example, which prevent leaks at a lower cost.

But customers typically aren’t given the choice. As of now, New York utilities aren’t required to disclose much about their planned pipe replacement work in advance. As a result, residents don’t get a real chance to consider the alternatives, said Fraczek. Some utilities offer incentives for ditching gas, but efforts to promote them have been lackluster, she said. With the right information at their fingertips, local activists could pick up the slack.

The bill would be a tool “for us to basically be partners to the utility,” said Fraczek.

Similar legislation passed a decade ago in Massachusetts has helped spur a grassroots push toward cleaner heating in the state. The effort originally targeted highly polluting gas leaks, but has rippled into a wider campaign. A neighborhood in the city of Framingham now gets its heating from an all-electric “thermal energy network,” the first of its kind in the country, as the result of a collaboration between advocates and the utility Eversource.

Audrey Schulman, a self-trained climate researcher and advocate in the Boston area, says the disclosure requirement has “been invaluable, because it allows people to understand what they’re paying for … and just decide if that’s what they want.”

The New York bill’s sponsors are hoping that an election-year focus on energy affordability could speed the bill forward and allow it to pass before the state legislature adjourns in June. Gonzalez said that the Senate’s passage of a utility reform package last year showed the chamber’s interest in the issue.

But the bill’s proponents expect opposition from utilities.

“They’re going to push back … because they basically have a really good deal right now,” Gallagher said. She described current oversight from the state’s Public Service Commission as insufficient.

“It’s not that difficult to get things past the goalie,” she said.