Obstructing decarbonization through efficiency: Gas utilities and demand side management politics in Canada

Despite commitments to decarbonization, gas infrastructure expenditures continue to grow in North America. This trend raises concerns about how carbon lock-in and fossil fuel obstruction influence energy transition trajectories. However, even fairly comprehensive accounts of fossil fuel obstruction do not consider gas utility demand-side management like energy efficiency programming as a component of lock-in. Demand-side interventions are ostensibly climate-friendly, especially compared to increased natural gas extraction, and therefore have received less scrutiny to date. Our paper asks whether and how gas companies are using energy efficiency regulatory structures and decarbonization imperatives to entrench gas infrastructure. We conducted a discourse analysis of demand side management policy documents from 2021 to 2027 in British Columbia and Ontario, Canada. We examined plans submitted by gas utilities to regulators, submissions made by intervenors (e.g. not-for-profits), and supporting documents. We argue that gas utilities use regulatory structures to entrench gas infrastructure by 1) making a future without gas unthinkable by both exploiting uncertainty and projecting certainty in energy rates, grid resilience, and other politically constructed processes, and 2) making a gas future climate friendly by legitimizing speculative technologies like renewable natural gas and hydrogen. We problematize the links between transition mechanisms and utilities which provides further opportunities for gas infrastructure entrenchment.