Strategies and Tools for Regulators
Kiera Zitelman is a Technical Director for the Center for the NARUC Center for Partnerships & Innovation, where she manages cooperative agreements with the U.S. Department of Energy on nuclear energy, coal-fired power, natural gas distribution, and microgrids. She develops technical assistance for state public utility commissions across these topical areas, developing webinars, briefing papers, trainings, workshops, tours, and other resources.
Taylor Fitzgerald is the Communications Specialist for the NARUC Center for Partnerships & Innovation, where she develops and executes outreach strategies to enhance the visibility of essential resources, trainings, and other activities that assist state commissions contending with complex current and emerging issues.
The rapid pace of technological and policy changes in the natural gas sector poses complicated questions for state utility commissions.
To ensure that state utility regulators have sufficient information for decision making in this environment, in December 2025, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) Task Force on Natural Gas Resource Planning announced the release of four planning roadmaps offering strategies and tools to help commissions align natural gas distribution utility planning processes with state policy goals.
The release of these roadmaps represents the culmination of a two-year effort supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, NARUC Center for Partnerships & Innovation, and NARUC members from more than twenty states.
Roadmap Facilitation
To ensure that the roadmaps would be relevant and broadly applicable, the development process was led by state utility commissioners and commission staff representing twenty states, facilitated by NARUC staff and contracted consultants from The Brattle Group, and incorporated input from dozens of subject-matter experts and stakeholder representatives at key points.