Future of Gas Studies
Andrew Trump is a senior principal in West Monroe’s Energy & Utilities Practice. He leads and supports practice development, business development, and client delivery in a wide range of electric and gas regulatory and strategy assessments and planning activities.
Across the United States, state legislatures, public utility commissions, and state-level resource agencies are engaged in intensive policy and technical study efforts about the role of building electrification as a hugely important decarbonization pathway.
Commensurately, local municipal building code administrators are considering new standards for heating systems and appliances to encourage or force greater reliance on electricity. Implicit in the data provided by the U.S. DOE EIA 2023 Outlook report, at stake is the future of at least 18.5 quadrillion Btus of U.S. domestic energy supply from methane, nearly twenty percent of the 97.3 quadrillion Btus required as primary energy used in all U.S. domestic end-use sectors, including transportation.
For some stakeholders and advocates, these many state-sponsored future-of-gas study efforts signal a moment full of opportunity, which could trigger and shape a deep transformation of how we conceive of, plan, and develop our housing stock and building envelopes.