The Devious Plan to Keep Us Hooked on Gas

Americans get hit with a lot of robocalls and spam text messages, warning of an impounded car or expiring insurance, or that you've just won a cruise trip. If you could just hand over your credit card, your social security number, and maybe the keys to your house. At the end of 2020, the residents of Santa Barbara, California, the city where I live, got a different kind of spam text. So it's like December, the end of December. It's everybody's on holiday all of the sudden we start getting notices that people are getting texts. These texts weren't selling a product. They were selling lies about our energy system. Some of my friends in town who know that I work on energy policy reached out to me asking, what were these text messages all about? And quickly I got linked up with Katie Davis, the chairwoman of my local Sierra Club. And we started to work together to figure out what was going on. These just spam texts out of nowhere that say, you know, urgent alert Santa Barbara city is going to ban gas and destroy the grid and drive up energy prices. Contact them immediately. One thing Katie and I both noticed is that the first round of text messages were totally anonymous. There was nothing saying this is from such and such group. It was really sketchy. It's illegal to just randomly text people who have not opted in to your lists. You can do one by one for political purposes, but this seemed everybody got through at the same time. Katie pointed out to me that these texts were timed just a few weeks ahead of a local city council meeting, which would decide whether our city would pursue a ban on new connections for natural gas or as I like to say fossil gas in new homes and buildings in the city. Clearly this was a deliberate campaign to raise alarm ahead of that decision. They seemed to have hit everyone in Santa Barbara because a lot of people we know got them. Even the city council members got them. A lot of people were misinformed by it. It was really misleading. Miss led by this false information email started pouring into the city council and it threatened to up and critical climate work that advocates like Katie had been working on four years. But we weren't going to let that happen. Were we? We were going to get to the bottom of this. (upbeat music) This is a matter of degrees, stories for the climate curious. I'm Dr. Catherine Wilkinson and I'm Dr. Leah Stokes. (upbeat music) So who was behind these mysterious text messages, Leah? To be honest, Catherine, I knew immediately. Those texts were just one piece of a large campaign that I had been tracking, that a powerful private utility in my home state of California was running to try to convince the public of the dangers and downsides of getting rid of fossil gas in buildings. That's pretty ironically when it feels like every week we learn more about just how much indoor air pollution gas is creating in people's homes. That's what we should be freaked out about, not some scary, scary dangers of getting rid of gas. Exactly, the problem is not getting rid of gas. It's keeping it in our homes. And the public, like you're saying, Catherine, is waking up to the dangers. And that's really starting to scare the gas industry. When we talk about gas in buildings, mostly what we're talking about is things like gas stoves, as well as furnaces and clothes dryers. Of course, all of these gas-powered appliances they wreak havoc on the climate. The EPA has found that greenhouse gas emissions from homes and commercial buildings accounted for 13% of our economy-wide pollution in 2019. That means that electrifying buildings could put a huge dent in cutting emissions this decade. And it's not just the climate impacts people are worried about. They're also worried about the health impacts like you mentioned, Catherine. We're learning more and more about how dangerous this is to our cardiovascular health, to creating asthma. There's a lot of bad things about burning gas in your homes. And we're going to get into all these problems with gas in our homes in this episode. The health angle, the safety issues, and the climate problem. To start off with, it's interesting that the idea of electrifying our homes is actually kind of a new idea. The problem with having fossil gas in our homes wasn't very well known, even among clean energy advocates, until quite recently. No one was even talking about how do we get gas out of the building sector. I mean, no one. I mean, even California. But it's like, what? You know, in 2017. That's Matt Vespa, a senior attorney with Earth Justice, a nonprofit legal organization that works to defend the environment. Because as they put it, the Earth needs a good lawyer. Recently, Matt and his team really started digging into how California's buildings are a big part of the state's carbon pollution problem. If you look at California, I'm Gaston Matt here. It's about evenly split between buildings, power, and industry. And you think about buildings and, you know, this sort of built environment and how complicated this is and how putting more gas in is just going to lock in more investment for decades. It became clear we really had to start tackling this. You know, Catherine, there's one academic paper that's really shaped my thinking on this issue. It came out two years ago and it's called committed emissions from existing energy infrastructure jeopardize 1.5 degrees C climate target. Okay, that's a bit of a mouthful. But basically what it means is that we cannot build any new fossil fuel infrastructure and limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Let that sink in for a second. We can't do anything more. No more gas furnaces and homes, no more pipelines, no more gas plants in the electricity system. We are at the end of the road here folks. Once you absorb that fact, you know, the stakes become very clear. They do and Leah, I have to say I think you could have a pretty fruitful side gig rewriting academic paper titles to be, you know, just direct. And hearing this just reminds me that I am all the more devastated that my efforts to lobby my mom against getting a new gas stove recently failed. I tried, I tried to tell her that this is a dead end and a potentially deadly appliance to no avail. Well, you know, we try our best, but this also reminds me, Catherine of the work of rewiring America, another nonprofit organization that's really changed my thinking on this issue. The way they talk about it is that they say every time we get to the end of life of an appliance, let's say a stove or a furnace, what we really need to do is make sure that it's replaced with an electric, clean alternative. Because every time we replace a piece of fossil fuel infrastructure with another piece of fossil fuel infrastructure, like a gas furnace with a new gas furnace, well, we're kind of putting in something that's going to be there for a long time, right? Yeah, maybe a couple decades. And we can't afford to do that. So let's say we pull that appliance out earlier before it's reached the end of its life. Well, now we've just kind of created waste in our system because we put a lot of energy and people and time into getting that appliance in there. Now we got to go and fix it. So that rewiring America concept has really shaped my thinking too about why we've got all these things, objects everywhere, and we need to turn them all into electric. It is kind of mind-boggling just to process how many stoves, how many water heaters, how many dryers, right? And as you're saying, we don't want to just be wasteful in the way that we deploy new appliances. There's a lot of energy and carbon embedded in the very metals and other materials that can prize these things. Mm-hmm. And that's why rewiring America says, "As soon as it reaches its end of life, it's time for the electric alternative." And this also means that what Santa Barbara was trying to do at the beginning of this year was really the right thing. You know, they were trying to stop new gas connections and begin turning the tide towards electrification. But we can't start with Santa Barbara because that's not where this story begins. It begins in Northern California. There were a lot of local governments and local communities that are really eager to do something about the climate crisis and buildings and building codes are one of the things that's actually within their authority. So in California, a local government can just decide pursuant to its police power and oversight over health and safety to just ban gas connections. Another approach is to adopt what's called a reach code and that's building codes that are above the state minimum standards. Okay, so cities can literally reach with their building codes above the minimum standards that gets set by the state. I guess just requiring buildings within the city to get cleaner faster. Yeah, exactly. That's the approach. And when Berkeley decided to start this trend in the summer of 2019, that's how they were thinking about it. Matt and some of his colleagues were actually at the city council meeting in person and he got a front row seat to a really successful initial effort to stop new gas connections. It all started with Berkeley. This was going to be the first all electric building code of anywhere in the country. All of us in the community went to that Berkeley council meeting and I will say it was just such a positive experience. Every comment wasn't favor. The Pacific gas and electric wasn't favor. It was so executed. It was Kate Harrison was the city council person. First of all, the presentation that she gave on the benefits of all electric homes for public health, for safety, for greenhouse gases. You don't have to worry about Earth. earthquakes and gas leaks, like it was just a top notch performance. And while she was doing that, her aid had this portable induction cooktop where she melted chocolate and then served like fondue with strawberries to all the council people during that whole thing. And so they were going to originally think about like sometimes with these things, depending on the city, there's like a first vote and a second vote. It was such a kumbaya day. They just voted the whole thing out the first day. Like it was done. And they didn't even do a second hearing or anything. Amazing. When does that happen, Leah? Not frequently enough, right? We're used to climate policy is taking forever and not happening. But here's one meeting with some fondue and it was done. And actually, Berkeley ended up starting this whole trend by the end of that year, by the end of 2019, around 20 cities in the state had adopted these bands or restrictions on gas and new construction. And it started to seem like this strategy was working. But that was northern California. When folks started to come to my neck of the woods, so Cal, well, it didn't go down quite that smoothly. Well, let's just say, you know, it's a tale of two California's. Southern California where I live has very different politics when it comes to gas. That's because we don't have a combined gas and electric company like Pacific gas and electric or PG&E. You know, that's what operates in the northern part of the state. Our gas utility is separate from our electric utility. And the gas utility is called the Southern California gas company or everybody just calls it so Cal gas. They're this really big gas monopoly. Actually, they're the largest in the country with over 21 million customers. One thing to understand as we dug in is that even though gas demand for buildings is maybe a third of all gas use in California, it represents about on average 85% of a gas utilities revenue. So for them, electrifying buildings and losing customers is an existential threat. It's also important to note that if you live in Southern California, like I do, and you have gas in your home, which I currently do until I get my permits to remove the gas from my home, you are a captured customer of SoCal gas. You have to pay them money. They're a monopoly utility. So I have to assume SoCal gas wasn't too happy about all these city councils considering banning gas in new buildings, not at all. Totally different story in Southern California where you've got SoCal gas. So as we start to get momentum in building electrification, this group emerged. It was probably early 2019 called California just for balanced energy solutions. It had a glossy website. It was just very professional. It had a number of members, you know, sort of coalition partners. It wasn't really clear who was really behind this from the website. It was clearly some kind of front group. It was just like so high budget and so polished. It was just not something that was remotely grassroots obviously. And I think I just kind of came out of nowhere. And also like, what is a Californian for balanced energy? What does that even mean? You know, it's just such a clearly front group name. So I think when you see groups like this, I think the first question you have to ask is, who has the most to lose by what they're advocating against and who has the most money? And the answer to that, if you look at this code, it's clearly SoCal gas. I mean, they were identified at least on the website, but they've got to be behind this. And then we were able to uncover emails that really showed that SoCal gas was recruiting members. They had, you know, a completely done up polished mission statement with talking points. I mean, it was already dialed up. So that was our first indication that they were behind it. A classic tactic of powerful industries who need to create the illusion that the public is on their side, astroturfing, i.e. faking a grassroots movement. Yep. You know, this is something I wrote a lot about in my book and saw as a common tactic that utilities are using more and more. And that's what started to play out in Southern California. SoCal gas and its front group, Californians for balanced energy solutions, aka C4 BES. That's how you know it's not real. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Maybe it's C4 BES, but anyway, they started to go after all these cities that were trying to move forward with gas bands in new construction. And the first place that started the trend in Southern California was San Luis Obispo. And this is where SoCal gas really brought, you know, came out in force, not only with dozens, if not, frankly, hundreds of employees trying to speak out against what San Luis Obispo was doing, the CEO showed up. They had the front group coming and you know, spreading misinformation and it was just all sorts of tactics to try to stop this from happening. You know, Emily Atkin, who run this amazing newsletter called heated that everybody should be subscribed to, she did some amazing reporting on this digging into these dark tactics that the gas industry was using there. I remember Emily did really great reporting on that last summer. And as ever, tell in the truth in that heated newsletter. Yeah, it was really fantastic. And after her reporting, full frontal with Samantha B, you know, that TV show, they picked up the story and did a segment on what was going down in San Luis Obispo and the kinds of harassment the mayor was facing from the gas industry. And what happens when you try to expose the truth about gas? They get vicious. I'm mayor Heidi Harmon and I was targeted by the gas industry. Mayor Harmon's town passed an ordinance to incentivize new buildings to cut out gas, but they got some surprising, let's call it pushback. The union president of the gas company said that I'm not going to rest until that f***ing red flowered Corilla de Vilco and all those other f***ing f***es are voted off that f***ing council. And so the intimidation tactics were at an all time low. They threatened to come to a council meeting during the pandemic. And so to see someone actually write in a letter that they were going to busload in people that are potentially COVID positive to intentionally infect. And therefore potentially kill members of our community. They stopped it nothing. You know, these insane gas company tactics really delayed the decision. But eventually that city dude moved forward on banning new gas hookups. But that didn't stop. So, Cal gas from stirring things up. But the next stop on the gas band tour, which was Culver City. Culver City was thinking about it. And there's this thing called sock puppeting. I started investigating all this stuff about front groups when I started learning about this on the different tactics. And I think sock puppeting is when you pretend you're someone you're not to sort of like help to try to bring other people like along. So basically what happened was it was in print that's the name of the PR firm that so gas contracted with one of their employees posed as just a person a resident in Culver City and went on next door and had this post that said, you know, I heard Culver City was going to take away our stoves. That sounds crazy to me. Like who wants to oppose this? But it was this idea to drum up hysteria and you know, be a plant. And then ideally then you'll get people that have no understanding of who you are. Well, your motivations are to kind of align themselves with you and generate, you know, momentum. They really are undermining the democratic process. Obviously like people aren't identifying who they really are. There's money going around that they're getting paid to do these things that is not clear. The whole point of these front groups and these tactics is to just to create a false sense of opposition that doesn't kind of link to the people that are really opposed to it, which in this case is the gas company. And after all these weird, aggressive tactics and San Luis Obispo and Culver City, that's when those text message blasts started to come to my town, Santa Barbara, back in December. And that's when Katie Davis and I got involved. Yeah, I don't know if they just pulled them from voter rolls or what they did, but they it's not certainly these people did not opt in to receive texts from the gas industry that I know for certain. This is why it was important to us to pass this in Santa Barbara too because there haven't been a lot of these passed in SoCal gas territory. And this is why they're fighting these tooth and nail. Most of the 40 something ordinances that have passed have been in Northern California, which is PG&E and PG&E sells both gas and electricity. So they were actually supportive of the bands because like we'll sell more electricity and they were fine with it. But here, SoCal gas just purely sells gas. So after Katie and I talked, I wrote this op-ed in the local newspaper and I started getting organized with her and some friends and some environmental advocates to show up to this January City Council meeting to set the record straight and stop the gas company and its front groups from blocking this great policy with their lives, which brings us to the beating heart of democracy, Catherine, the local city council meeting. Ms. Clerk, if you would read that into the record, S Madam Mayor already there we go. Item, AT, Energy Code Amendments for New Billings. In January, the city council meeting took place over Zoom and it started with this excellent presentation from Alelia Peranto, who works for the city as the energy and climate manager. It was her job to do the research on the gas ban for new buildings and present a proposal to the city council and the public. Madam Mayor and council members, good evening. I will try to be as brief as possible with this presentation though it's a big one. I would say no you've had a long time. evening. So we're here this evening to have a study session on building code amendments, otherwise known as reach codes or stretch codes for new construction in Santa Barbara. That city staffer, Peranto, she was really well prepared and quite bold in her statements. She even talked about the text messages and who they were coming from. After her presentation, there was a public comment period where me and a lot of other people commented. But one of the first people to speak was a man named Tim Mahoney. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. Tim Mahoney, so Cal Gas and we are a long term energy provider in Santa Barbara committed to working with the city and other groups to achieve the goals of reduced emissions and create a more sustainable city. Oh gross. I know. Doesn't he sound like a used car salesman or a guy selling like cigarettes and like the fifties? I'm not a lobbyist here. I'm not I'm not trying to lobby you. I give information and education out to the public. I love Santa Barbara as you guys all do. Let me highlight just a few important points. To successfully achieve carbon neutrality, we need carbon neutral fuels and gas infrastructure to deliver those fuels. So so Cal Gas is an industry leader in increasing the flow of renewable gases that can be delivered via the existing gas infrastructure. Now renewable natural gas is currently the only negative carbon fuel and experts agree it is needed to decarbonize buildings. Hold please. Did he just say decarbonize? I know. Yep. You know, you got a real expert on addressing climate change when they literally cannot pronounce the word decarbonization. Much like the company was promoting false information ahead of the meeting in the text, they continued this pattern in their comments to the city council. So Catherine, unfortunately, we're going to have to do a quick fact check of this fine gentleman's comments in the city council meeting where he starts to promote something called renewable natural gas. And it's important to set the record straight regardless of what was presented tonight. The record is that there is enough renewable natural gas supplies nationwide to replace up to 90% of fossil fuels in the home. Renewable gas, renewable natural gas coming from dairy, sewers, wastewater plants, dumps and landfills. Nice moves, Tim. When in doubt, just throw in the buzzword renewable. And of course, he's talking here about something that is real. Methane is the fossil gas that we pipe into our homes. And methane also gets created in industrial cattle operations, in sewage plants, landfills. So it's a thing that exists, but Tim's going a little bit too far here, maybe that he's just got those renewable gases on top. That's right, Catherine. You know, there's some amount of gas that we could collect, but the question is how much of the gas that we use in our homes, let alone in our electric power sector, could be replaced by these quote, renewable gas solutions. So I asked Matt if he thought that this idea could really scale how much renewable gas could we really have? And is so-called gas telling the truth? This is just a classic fossil fuel industry delay tactic where they put out this false solution. That's renewable natural gas. Oh, it's coming. We don't have to change a thing. It's so when the real solution, which is electrifying and getting off gas entirely, is already there. It's already feasible. And so they've been pushing this for years. And I think initially had really some buy-in among regulators. And I think we've been able to walk that back. Even if you look past a lot of the localized issues that are very serious around dairy digesters and how they impact local communities, the potential for renewable natural gas. There's the amount that's out there if you were to capture it all is maybe five, seven percent of total gas demand. So you can have all that. And there's still 93, 94 percent of gas demand that we have to eliminate. The way we do that is taking those gas uses like our space and water heating and converting them to electric and empowering that off-renewable grid. That is the only way forward. And they've been trying to create this false alternative as a tactic to just maintain business as usual. So frustrating to have this pedaling of false solutions when there is a real legit good solution. It would just mean so-called gas would have to sunset. And I guess we need to make sure that we're taking care of workers, but companies sunset all the time, right? Think about blockbuster. It happens. Certain business models go out of date. And especially when the company is hurting people, not just destabilizing the climate, but making our communities less safe and affecting people's health. The question is, is this an industry worth saving? Exactly. So Leah, stop keeping us in suspense here. What happened at the City Council meeting? Well, Katie and me and a bunch of other cool people, we put up a great fight at that City Council meeting back in January. And we ended up with a unanimous vote from Council to take the next step on this idea of banning gas and new construction. But that wasn't the end of the road. Unlike in Berkeley, the City Council would need to vote again and make a final decision about six months later in July. So by now they must have made the final decision. What happened? Well, Catherine, you're just going to have to listen to the rest of this episode before you find out. Oh, Leah, you're so difficult. You know, we can joke about all this, but the stakes are really high here, Catherine, not just for the climate, but also for people's safety. One of the reasons why this issue is so important to Katie is because of her own experience with the dangers of gas, particularly when climate change is driving more and more deadly fires. We live on a fairly narrow lane and it was this freakishly hot wind came up that I'd like to which I've never experienced. It was breaking heat records all over the state at that time and it knocked a tree into utility pole very typical and started a fire very close. I mean, I thought we were protected because there kind of orchards behind us, but it was in it was not too far from us. It was in the neighborhood. So it wasn't like a wildfire. It was like a climate fire from this hot, hot wind sparked a fire and I just we just had a flea. I had to drop everything and get out. I was just completely panicked like I was trying to drive away and my electric cart was still plugged in. So yes, it was scary and then a lot of the homes on my street burned down. Most of them did ours. We were just lucky. Just the fences around the house burned, but the house was okay and we heard later that the fire trucks didn't want to go down the lane because they were worried about gas fires because one of the big risks if there's fires or earthquake or the mudslides did this actually. We had some fires and then mudslides and monocetos and the mudslides triggered a whole bunch of gas fires. Gas is highly combustible and it's a dangerous thing to be putting into our homes and piping around on our streets where any little leak could ignite. So things are clearly getting more and more dire around gas. Is it making the gas industry get more and more desperate and their attempts? It seems like it is, Leah. Yeah, the industry is getting more desperate and they're looking for new ways to kind of influence the public to stay with gas. So for example, Rebecca Lieber, who was at the time writing for Mother Jones, did this great reporting about how the gas industry has been paying sort of hip millennial Instagram influencers to promote gas stoves. When in doubt, roll in the millennial influencers. I think that's maybe part of why this story really struck a nerve. I saw it passed around a lot, but I think it was also the timing of the piece right around the time that we were seeing more and more research on the air quality problems that are so clearly tied to having gas in our homes and other buildings. Yeah, Rebecca's reporting broke through in a big way, including ending up in that Samantha B sketch that we heard a little bit of earlier. And you know, part of that sketch also involved interviewing a woman named Brady Seals, who works for the Rocky Mountain Institute, another environmental nonprofit, and who is an expert on the health impacts of gas stoves. I love my gas stove. It's efficient. It makes me a professional chef and all these influencers say it makes the food. Oh, I don't know. Tasteier, brownier, flameier, natural gas, natural gas. Look at that flame. You'll have to prime my gas stove from my cold dead hams. I make delicious pan fried ham. The gas industry's done a great job marketing. I have to give it to them, but gas stoves emit a lot of the same pollutants that come from our car tail pipes in your home. That can't be good for you. We looked at 50 years nearly of health research on what are the human health risks of gas stoves. And what we found is that it's mostly respiratory because we're breathing in these pollutants. They are invisible, odorless pollutants. Is there anything that you think is worse than a gas stove? Gas oven? Are you just like the biggest buzzkill at a party? You know, the more we learn about gas stoves and indoor air pollution, the worse it looks. That research that Brady Seals compiled paints a pretty bleak picture. Homes with gas stoves can have nitrogen dioxide concentrations that are 50 to 400% higher than homes with electric stoves. And that can actually make your home exceed these EPA rules for outdoor air pollution, meaning being inside has got dirtier air than being outside. And the risks for children are particularly bad. It turns out that children growing up in a home with a gas stove have a 42% increased risk of asthma. That is a huge difference. I feel like parents especially really need to know about this. I mean, you just think you're cooking your kid pasta, but you might actually be triggering an asthma attack. And it's not just our health or the health of our families that are at risk with gas in our homes. It's also our basic safety. There's a lot of research showing that leaks from gas supply infrastructure are rampant in cities all across the country. And these leaks don't just exacerbate climate change. Sometimes they cause entire houses to blow up. Right. We've seen this happen in Massachusetts and Maryland just recently, right? Seems like fewer house explosions is a pretty clear public good, something we should strive for in our communities. I agree. Controversial take their Catherine. You know, what's so disturbing is as we learn more about the dangers of gas from a health and a climate and a safety perspective, gas companies are doubling down on their lives. And they're using the money that they get from people like you and me and our listeners as monopoly trapped customers to do it. They're funding the lives with the money that we pay them. This is something that gets Matt Vespa really upset. So there's a program in the commissions energy efficiency proceeding around codes and standards. And what that means is like utilities are actually paid and have gotten shareholder incentives actually to advocate for strong efficiency codes and standards. So that might be federal standards for furnaces, for water heating, data, appliance standards and also building codes. And the idea of this is they're using their expertise to help support more stringent codes and standards. But instead, so Cal Gas used a lot of that money to quietly discourage electrification. So Cal Gas took that money and instead used it to undermine proposed standards at the Department of Energy federally at the Energy Commission statewide and to oppose local government measures to do stronger local building codes. Wow. Well, that'll make California taxpayers feel good. Yeah, it's just terrible that the gas company is taking money from everyday people and using it to spread misinformation. And you know, the body, the regulatory agency that's supposed to hold them accountable is called the California Public Utilities Commission. They have all these proceedings and rules and it's very complicated. But the basic point is that they're supposed to be holding the gas company accountable. And Matt Vespa has some serious questions about whether or not they're doing that. And then there was a proceeding to really investigate it more deeply. And we were part of that proceeding. And what that uncovered is internal documents going back to 2014 where they saw electrification coming in 2014 before the environmental community was really kind of prioritizing this or even had kind of really had it on their radar screen any meaningful way. They saw it coming and they were determined to fight it at every step of the way. They were also using customer money to oppose these reach codes. I mean, I was part of discovery. Like, how did you build this? Matt and some of his colleagues at Earth Justice launched a whole investigation into this issue. And they were able to prove that SoCal Gas was using customer funds inappropriately. And in the end, the utility commission agreed with that finding, but it wasn't enough. We got a decision from the commission which said they weren't allowed to do this. You can't use money that you're given to advocate for stronger standards to actually advocate to weaken them or obstruct them. I mean, it's not that complicated, but they did agree with us that all of this was misconduct. The problem was after doing that, they didn't impose any penalties. I think SoCal Gas is able to keep doing this and get away with this because regulators, in this case, the Public Utilities Commission is not doing its job to impose consequences and hold them accountable. Now, that decision we've appealed because it's really the commission's job to send a deterrent effect to say, if we catch you doing this, we're going to penalize you to dissuade you from doing it again. Instead, there, what the commission did was say, oh, just return the money you spent, a fraction of that money really to the customer. So it's like, I rob a bank, I get caught, I give the money back and I get to walk away. Well, I would probably rob a bank again because maybe I won't get caught the second time and there's no other consequence. So, you know, we do have a problem. We have a gas utility whose business interest is fundamentally in conflict with us, decarbonizing with California, you know, achieving its clamp objectives, with fighting the climate crisis. And we've got a regulatory entity that doesn't seem capable of holding it accountable. And that's where we stand right now. So, I mean, this is our regulator doing this. And I think it was a real miscarriage of justice and we're hoping they'll reconsider it. Well, I totally agree with Matt here. What an incredible miscarriage of justice, incredible failure of regulators just to do their job of regulating. So, is this just the end? Well, it's the end for now of the California story. But, Catherine is not the end of our episode because these problems that we're seeing with gas companies fighting back against the public, against facts, against regulators, they're not just happening in my home state. Gas utilities are starting to ramp up and attack climate policies all across the country. You know, a lot of journalists are documenting this kind of bizarre trend from people like Ben Storro at EE News to Rebecca Lieber at Vox and Darnan Norr, a climate reporter at Earther. She's also been tracking these bands on bands. And so, we called her up to hear what she had to share with us about what's going on in all these states. I think the most recent that I've seen was one that passed in Ohio, Texas, past one in May. There were a number of others before that in June, Louisiana's House of Representatives unanimously approved one of these bills. Last year, there was also Oklahoma and Tennessee, Arizona, 15 other states too. It's now up to 19 states total that have banned gas bands that have said, you know, what California has done in 47 cities. That isn't allowed anymore. You can't do this. Well, I didn't realize that it's already up to 19 states. And this seems like kind of a classic page out of the conservative lawmaker playbook, right? Any major issue, gun control, air pollution, corporate prisons, when it seems like there might be regulation coming into place to constrain or address those things. We see business groups get into action and try to pass preemptive legislation that would make it harder to regulate industries that cause public harm. Yeah, exactly. And it really is preemptive. The really interesting thing is that in some of these states, there was no gas band on the table to begin with. I mean, Governor DeWine in Ohio signed one of these bands on gas bands. No one was even talking about really banning new gas hookups there. So it's pretty clear that these utilities are, it seems kind of freaking out. And they're worried that there's going to be a bigger movement to put bands on gas hookups than there is right now. Or even just a bigger movement to turn away from gas at home. Totally, totally. Darni also talked about some reporting that shows that gas utilities are trying to slow walk electrification. A trove of emails was brought to the public's attention by the Energy and Policy Institute and E&E News, which showed a coordinated effort by these gas utilities to convince the public that we should not move away from gas. E&E news, they got their hands on a bunch of emails from this utility trade association basically that gave this sort of inside story on how all of these different prohibitions on gas bands were popping up across the country. So it gave us some insight into what the messaging was like, you know, these assertions that gas restrictions are like a snub, which a free choice was a big part of it. You know, there was also lots of stuff about how this was like an assault on builders and restaurant industries and things like this. This document really gets into some pretty common talking points in the energy industry. This focus on messaging that, you know, no longer says that the climate crisis isn't happening, but rather just sort of talks about how we need to make room for all kinds of fuels and not rush into electrification of everything, you know, why we need to maybe move slowly and continue polluting for the time being. I certainly think that perception, that public perception of gas is shifting. And I think, frankly, the fact that these sort of anti-gas band crusades have been happening, the fact that these trade groups are so invested in this means that they have something to be afraid of, right? It's a response to a movement that's, I think, really picked up speed in the past couple of years. And just like we saw with Katie Davis' story, there's a personal element here for Darna too. She did some earlier reporting on the dangers of gas where she consulted with an expert about what her own gas stove was doing to the air quality inside of her own Baltimore apartment. I talked with some experts, including someone at the Rocky Mountain Institute, Brady Seals, who's herself kind of an anti-cast influencer, one might say, an influencer for the new induction stoves. Walked me through how to do an assessment of my own gastro, and how much of a threat it was to my health and what impact it might be having on the climate. And I walked over to my stove, I checked out what the hood was doing, I checked out how well it was venting. The answer was not venting very well at all. My stove is pretty far from a window. The fan on it doesn't really provide very much strength to push the emissions away. It doesn't really have an outlet, it's not going anywhere, it's just going up to your ceiling, I suppose. Exactly, that's the thing, is that a gastro that has a vent on it. Where the vent is merely going back into your apartment isn't going to really do you very much good. Since we had that conversation, I try to open my windows every time I use the stove, I'll put the vent on, but I know that from the data, gastro is kind of create levels of indoor pollution that would be illegal for anybody to be experiencing outside. And the kinds of pollution that they produce from nitrogen dioxide to particulate matter are vast and kind of terrifying. Yep, that's right. I feel the same way about my gastro right now. First of all, it doesn't always light. We say gastro is great, but anybody who's used one has definitely had a quick, quick, quick problem. And then you can smell sometimes going into your house when it's not lighting properly. And my hood vent also doesn't work anymore. And so it's actually kind of scary. They say if you cook with a gas stove for like 30 minutes, it's actually putting out those kinds of levels of air pollution that you talked about that are higher than would be legal outdoors. I've been opening windows and opening doors and I have an induction stove that I bought. It's just on the back order. Oh, congratulations. I would definitely switch from electric induction stove if I could, but I like most people in the United States rent my home. So I think that, you know, it's also important to keep in mind that gas stoves are really an environmental justice issue too. We know that lower income families are less likely to have good ventilation, good hoods than higher income ones. So the utility industries and the energy industries can say all they want about energy choice and about fuel choice and everything. But the truth is like you're not really making a choice if you're like most Americans who's renting an apartment in the United States. That's so true. I posted at the beginning of the year a sort of New Year's resolution, which was to electrify my home. And I'm working on that. Santa Barbara has a very long permitting process, but I will be loud soon to do it. And you know, a lot of people responded to the tweet with pictures of themselves as renters and what they were doing to get off gas. And some of them had literally just taken like a cutting board, put it on top of their gas stove and then bought these induction burners like a hundred bucks a pop and put those on the stove. So they now had an induction stove basically. And you know, in terms of baking rather than using the oven part of the stove anymore, they were using a little electric toaster oven, which actually I've been doing for like six or seven years now. It's really true. And like I think even just a few years ago, induction burners were much more expensive than they are now, but you can buy them on the internet now at prices that I think pretty much anyone can afford. And you know, they're also safer a lot of the times. They have coils that get heated only if they come into contact with magnetic surfaces, like an iron pan. So your kid isn't as likely to walk over to a stove and burn themselves or something like that. There's lots of reasons to use induction stoves. Also lots of top chefs across the world use these now. People actually prefer them and say that they can get like a more even brown on their food by using them. Yes, stoves, Leah. We're back to stoves. I mentioned earlier that I failed at my stove lobbying efforts with my mom, but I succeeded with my stepmom who also recently had to buy a stove and she is loving the induction. And my dad has pretty advanced Alzheimer's. So I also feel a bit of relief about that safety element too. And it seems to me that this is great news. We're getting rid of gas and replacing it with something better. But I also get the sense that we're going to need more than an individual daughter's best stove lobbying campaigns. Exactly. You know, we can all do our best. I'm going to electrify my home. You're doing your part with all your family members. Our listeners, I'm sure, are out there doing things. I talked about those cool people on Twitter getting their induction stoves. We're all chipping away at this. But the real opportunity that we need to be focused on right now is in Congress with this climate bill that we've been talking about that should pass this summer. So the question is how can we get more people induction stoves and electric heat pumps at all this cool new technology? How can we help more people including low income folks and communities of color to electrify their homes? Which brings us Catherine to our last guest of this episode, Rose Stevens-Bucker, who works at Block Power. And she knows a lot about how we can electrify our buildings and how federal policy can help us do it. I'm a senior strategist associate at Block Power. And what I really do is work with corporate policy makers, utilities, state local governments to help push the electrification cause as well as raise attention to heat pump technologies and in particular, air source heat pumps for deployment in all buildings. I feel like this is one of those examples of a job description not really capturing what you do like the title. I'm the female blackbird. I'm the cat in the planet. As we talked about last season in the episode 2035, an electric number where we interviewed Donnell Baird who founded Block Power, that company is on the front lines of electrification. Their strategy is to make sure that people from all backgrounds can electrify buildings that they live and work and play in. Rose shared a story with me about how this works in practice. I think the ones that really hit home for me are the houses of worship where you have these old or they can be new buildings where a bunch of people come and they gather and they fellowship, but they have been plagued with either the buildings too hot. It's too cold in the winter. Their boiler continues to break. This impacts their service, their worship, their fellowship time. Even the community outreach programs that they offer in their communities. They come to Block Power. They don't know how to get started. They want to improve the climate within their buildings. They might not have a lot of capital to do these improvements and they say, Block Power, what do we do? How do we get there? My colleagues hold their hands, walk them through it. They offer this turnkey suite of solutions from start to finish on how they can improve their entire building, starting with installing air source heat pumps. Be still my heart. I got really into heat pumps when I wrote about them for the book Drawdown a few years ago. Basically, heat pumps are extremely cool. They extract heat from the air and transfer it, either pulling it from the endores out for cooling in the summer or pulling heat from the outdoors in for heating in the winter. The source of that heat can be the air, the ground. It can even come from water. And you've got heating and cooling all in the same contraption, all powered by electricity and over their lifetime, they save homeowners money too. Yeah, exactly. It's like, we've got this super cool technology that doesn't require you to burn any deadly dangerous poisonous stuff in your house. And it does heating and cooling. You don't need a furnace and an air conditioner. You can have a two in one deal. And this electric technology is ready to go right now. What Rose says is that the question is, where are the policies at the local, state, and federal level to support getting these technologies swapped into all kinds of buildings across the country? So I know you've been working on this. There's a bill that could pass in Congress through budget reconciliation. And I was wondering, like, how could this help with building electrification? How could this mean that there'd be more opportunities for people all across the country to start electrifying their homes? What should we be looking for in a bill to make that the reality? Gosh, a few things. We've got to bring the cost down of heat pumps first and foremost. And we can really do that by incentivizing manufacturers and distributors from the get-go. Second, we have to really incentivize consumers to want to change over to this new technology. We have to have programs and incentives that really help to install it and also have buildings, in particular, ready for energy efficiency products to go into their homes. That can be everything from policies around weatherization, health readiness, making sure that we're making heat pumps that are accessible for all Americans. American made is something that has been out there for years and years and years, I would like to see more manufacturers invest time and resources into producing heat pumps here in the US for short. So we need the manufacturing support and we need to build our workforce and what about like making it affordable for everyday people, low income folks to buy heat pump in the first place. How does that work with government policy? It's going to be a multi-pronged approach to making sure that this is affordable, that this technology is affordable. What we're not seeing is enough funds and efforts. We need a lot more funds and resources dedicated to if we're going to put solar on your roof, you can't have a roof that's falling in. If we're going to talk about improved insulation, we can't have a spestus and lead in the walls. We have to talk about that removal. If we're going to talk about really having a comfort quality of life home, we have to talk about sealing and insulating. And all of that really has to come before we bring the actual air source heat pump product to the site project and installing it. Going back to your point about what needs to happen in the LMI communities in order to make sure that these technologies are delivered, it's additional resources. One of the pieces is to make homes more livable, more safe as a first step. So get that insulation in place, remove lead, spestus, mold in some cases. And then we can think about electrification, which is only going to improve that indoor air quality and that health by getting out of the pollution that's happening in the house. Yeah, definitely, you know, blocked by block, community by community. We have to get into these communities. We have to build trust. And then we have to educate. So how does federal policy help with that? How is federal policy going to make this go faster or help more low-income folks, more communities of color get access to all these benefits? It's about creating policies that can be, that can trickle down to the state and the local government offices. And I think that a good example in the Biden administration, finally having federal funds and federal implementation really activated at state and local levels is the dissemination of the COVID vaccine once the Biden administration came into play. You know, we really saw this multi-leveled engagement. We really saw this concrete effort to ensure that whatever decisions and money that was kind of made at the highest levels were really having a step by step process when it came to implementation for state and local governments. So basically what you're saying is the federal government needs to spend some money on programs that would help reduce the cost of making your home more tight so that it's not leaking air and improving the health by removing lead pipes and lead paint and then putting in that heat pump so that the federal government will create like a state program that will trickle down all the way and help people do this in like multifamily houses and homes and commercial buildings and all that kind of stuff. Yes, exactly. And, you know, to your point, we do know that not every state has the funds to be able to really deal with such a level of need. And so federal policy needs to really take in consideration how do we fund and support state offices that need to grow. We need to figure out a way how we can support our state and local governments to really tackle this huge endeavor that we're trying to take on. On the other side is to build that ground swell of momentum, which only supports the state and local elected officials, which only supports our federal government as well. We need to tell them that, you know, enough is enough. We don't want your fossil fuels anymore. So Leah, this seems like a really good moment to remind everyone of our ultimate call to action right now, really are only call to action right now, which is call for climate. Go to call the number four climate.com and walk through if you haven't done it yet, calling your senators and asking them to pass a big bold climate build this summer that actually invests in solutions like heat pumps and all the rest at the scale of the crisis. I couldn't have said it better myself, Catherine. Now is the moment we can get these induction stoves. We can make them more affordable and accessible. We can get these heat pumps. You know, we don't have to keep using this dirty fossil gas in our homes. We can cut the cord. So to speak, get off the gas. And we just need some federal policy to help us do it. So Leah, can you tell me now what happened with the gaspan and Santa Barbara? I know I've held you and the listeners in suspense for too long. Well, the good news is, Catherine, it passed unanimously. Woohoo! And you know, Catherine, that was a great local win and I'm so happy it happened in my town, but I feel like we got an even bigger win on the horizon. Wouldn't it be exciting if we got a huge climate package over to the finish line in Congress this summer that included investments in building electrification that helped people get those heat pumps and those induction stoves? Wouldn't that be something to woohoo and celebrate about? It most certainly would. A matter of degrees is co-hosted by me, Dr. Leah Stokes and me, Dr. Catherine Wilkinson. We are a production of Post-Script Media, podcasts for a changing planet. Jamie Kaiser, Dalvin Abouaghi, and Daniel Waldorf produce the show. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. Sean Markwant edited, mixed, and composed our theme song. Additional music came from Blue Dots sessions. The show art was designed by Carl Spherzum. Our website was designed by Caroline Hadelac Sono. Fact checking by Emma Swanson. Thanks to our funders and supporters who make this show possible. The Sunrise Project, North Fight Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the 11-hour project, and UC Santa Barbara. If you're digging the show, please hop onto Apple Podcast and give us a five-star rating or leave a very kind review. Yes, we love the kind reviews. And come back soon as we tell more stories for the climate curious. Not quite as smoothly as Fondue, Leah. Not indeed. We'll have to see if we want to Fondue if by that moment or not.