Natural Gas Consumers Save Money And The Environment
Since 2014, the total price of natural gas has decreased an average of 35 percent in New Brunswick as more businesses are making the switch to cleaner energy sources that Liberty Utilities is ready to provide.
Gilles Volpé, Vice President for Liberty New Brunswick, says the environmental and economic advantages of natural gas are appealing.
“It’s a very economical source of energy,” he says. “It is 20 to 30 percent less expensive than electricity and about 15 percent less expensive than oil, so from an energy source point of view, it’s very cost-effective. There are emission savings for people making the switch and of course cost savings for people to switch over to natural gas as an energy source.”
Volpé says natural gas is a part of the reason New Brunswick and Canada have met their greenhouse gas emissions targets so far.
“People are switching away from coal to natural gas for electricity production. In home heating, they’ve switched from oil to natural gas, which is a much cleaner form of energy.”
Trends over the past decade illustrate the steep economic savings of natural gas.
In 2021, Liberty plans on continuing to lower the cost of natural gas for its customers. So far, the Liberty Utilities Gas (LUG) price has hovered around $7 per Gigajoules (GJ). That’s the result of long-term pipeline capacity contracts which bring in less expensive gas from Alberta and Ontario.
“We had gone to the regulator last year for a reduction in our distribution rates for 2021, which they approved,” said Volpé. “In 2022, we plan on going to the regulator again and ask for more rate reductions on the distribution rate side of things.”
“We will continue to seek rate reductions for the foreseeable future and pass those savings onto our customers.”
Volpé is optimistic about the long-term prospects for Liberty and the value it brings to its customers because natural gas is a critical part of the province’s greenhouse gas reduction plan.
“Natural gas and the gaseous energy distribution system and the infrastructure is going to be around for decades and decades. You can’t get to net zero in 2050 without having some form of gaseous energy distribution, like renewable natural gas and hydrogen” he said.
“The gaseous energy distribution that we operate can be used to distribute all kinds of forms of gas and the investment that customers make today will be long-term investments of using gas as an energy source.”
This story is sponsored by Liberty Utilities.