When legislation aimed at helping low-income households swap carcinogen-leaking gas appliances for cleaner electric ones came up for a hearing this past May, a whopping 86 people showed up to testify in its favor. Only one person submitted a letter opposing the bill. Loose Lips will give readers just one guess which company that person works for.
If you said Washington Gas, one of the District’s two utility monopolies, you’re probably pretty familiar with how things work in D.C. Despite prolific PR efforts to the contrary, the gas and electric purveyors at Washington Gas and Pepco remain the staunchest, deepest pocketed opponents to climate progress in the District. And LL hears that the gas company, in particular, has been ramping up its efforts in recent weeks to gin up opposition to the legislation via a mix of backroom lobbying and scare tactics.
The word around the Wilson Building is that the usual team of in-house lobbyists at Washington Gas—including former Ward 4 Councilmember Brandon Todd—has been making the rounds to raise questions about the costs associated with the legislation at a time of financial uncertainty in the city. The company has also hired a who’s who of outside help to amp up the pressure. Washington Gas’ January lobbying disclosure forms detail big monthly retainers for Max Brown and Rob Hawkins (both with deep ties to Mayor Muriel Bowser), former At-Large Councilmember David Catania, and Corey Arnez Griffin, former chief of staff for At-Large Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie. (LL has to admit that these monthly fees sound almost good enough to sell his soul and take a lobbying gig, considering they range from $7,000 a month for Brown to $13,000 a month for Griffin.)
And then there are the rumblings about a poll in the field over the past few weeks soliciting opinions about the bill, complete with some leading questions that closely mirror the company’s talking points, according to screenshots of the online survey provided to LL. “Opponents of the Healthy Homes Act say it will impose higher energy costs on low- and moderate-income rate payers, costing them on average $1,000 more per year, take choices away from residents to use the energy sources that work for them, and divert critical funding from crime reduction and public schools, while doing little to help the environment or curb the impacts of climate change,” according to a screenshot of the the poll (though the bill’s proponents dispute all of those assertions as grossly deceptive).
LL has not been able to find anyone making those arguments other than Washington Gas itself. There isn’t any direct indication that the company is sponsoring the poll, but environmentalists advocating for the legislation reason that pretty much no one else has the same motivation (or resources) to back this sort of tactic except the utility. The fact that the survey firm, Luce Research, asks respondents about their opinions of Washington Gas sure seems like another powerful hint of who is behind the poll.
“These firms, in church language, they sow seeds of discord,” says the Rev. Lewis Tait Jr., the pastor at the Village Church in Ward 7 who has been supporting the bill through his work with the Washington Interfaith Network. “It’s a business, and it’s going to fight back, even if it has to use false narratives to win its argument and get people to stick with gas.”
A Washington Gas spokesperson did not respond to LL’s questions about the bill and its efforts to oppose it.
Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, the legislation’s lead backer, says he hopes to move the bill through his Committee on Transportation and the Environment before the month is out. (The sudden death of lead committee staffer Chris Laskowski, one of the bill’s chief architects, has delayed the process somewhat, but Allen is hoping to pass the bill “in his honor.”) Allen notes that a majority of the Council has already signed on to co-introduce it, so he fully expects the bill will pass in the next couple of months.
“When you’re fundamentally talking about being able to move away from fossil fuels, the company that sells you fossil fuels will oppose it,” Allen says. “There’s probably no version they’ll ever support … but this is a priority bill for the committee.”
The basic idea behind the bill is to seize on the emerging evidence about the dangers posed by gas stoves, which emit poisonous gasses that can contribute to respiratory illnesses such as asthma. This is especially problematic for people living in cramped apartments with poor ventilation, which is the case for many low-income tenants in D.C.
The legislation would create a retrofit program to be managed by the Department of Energy and Environment that aims to provide at least 30,000 households with free conversions to electric appliances, including stoves and HVAC systems, by 2040. Should it pass, the bill would be funded by an existing surcharge on utility bills that flows into a trust fund managed by the D.C. Sustainable Energy Utility, which manages renewable energy projects and home retrofits, in addition to newly imposed fees on the installation of new natural gas appliances in the city. Those funds also could be paired with federal programs promoting electrification, particularly the incentives included in the Inflation Reduction Act that Congress passed in 2022.
There have been some quibbles about the details—DOEE has raised concerns about the bill’s timeline for implementing the retrofits, among other issues—but generally the legislation has attracted broad support. Naturally, Washington Gas has been the exception, as these conversions are expected to cut into its profits.
Company lobbyist Portia Hurtt argues in a May 9 letter to Allen that the bill embodies “a dogmatic belief by some that electricity use represents the only pathway towards lower carbon emissions and a failure to recognize the existing efficiency of natural gas.” She argues that the bill will “most likely increase CO2 emissions and raise the cost of living in the District by significantly increasing utility bills.” She also claims that the gas utility is more efficient and relies on cleaner energy than the city’s electrical grid.
Basically none of that is true, says Mark Rodeffer, political chair of the Sierra Club’s D.C. chapter.
He notes that the city’s electrical grid is increasingly reliant on clean energy sources (and is required by law to speed the transition away from coal and other fossil fuels in the coming years) and that the heat pumps that people would receive as part of this transition to replace traditional gas furnaces are substantially more efficient than the gas company wants to admit. A December 2020 analysis by the Building Electrification Institute on behalf of DOEE suggests that D.C. tenants could actually save $500 to $600 per month with these upgrades, while single-family homeowners could save closer to $1,000 monthly, based on the organization’s comparisons of different buildings using gas and electric appliances.
“It’s so shameful and cynical,” Rodeffer says. “They want to keep their low-income customers on dirty energy, and they’re willing to stoop to misinformation to do so.”
Rodeffer sees the poll as a key part of the company’s strategy for pushing its arguments against the bill. The survey specifically asks respondents to identify whether a series of statements make them more or less likely to support the Healthy Homes Act, and all of the statements are resoundingly negative, according to the screenshots provided to LL. For instance, it argues that the legislation is “misleading and essentially aims to limit the ability for consumers to make their own choices about their energy needs,” noting that the bill would make it more expensive for people to install new gas appliances. While that claim is true (the bill includes fees designed to deter new gas appliance installations) other claims in the survey that the bill “will burden consumers with skyrocketing energy costs” and “lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions in the District” are more erroneous.
The poll also claims that the bill “has no clear funding source and could cost hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, diverting critical resources from things like education and public safety.” Rodeffer says that’s an “out and out lie.” The bill is “basically already funded,” Allen says, thanks to that fee flowing to the utility trust fund, so there is no danger of the cost concerns that have dogged other recent Council priorities.
The utility fought Rodeffer and other environmentalists in their efforts to add that fee to utility bills, so Washington Gas is surely “well aware” of its existence. And he points out that the company is currently asking for D.C.’s help in executing a multibillion-dollar overhaul of its gas infrastructure, which is much more likely to lead to skyrocketing costs for its customers than the Healthy Homes bill.
“I know six people who got texts about taking the poll over the course of 24 hours,” Rodeffer says. “Clearly they’re not going for a random sample here or anything like that. The purpose here isn’t to gauge public opinion but to sway public opinion.”
Though the company’s rhetoric may seem overheated at times (does anyone really believe the natural gas company is truly concerned about the bill’s impact on carbon emissions?), Tait says it has had an effect, based on his conversations with his congregation about the bill’s benefits. “Gas is an easy sell because we grew up with gas,” he says, adding that “gas cooks better” is a refrain he still hears from people skeptical about electrification.
“It’s an easy default back to gas, particularly if someone’s telling you that to have your house converted is gonna be expensive,” Tait says. “It’s just about education, giving people the information they need to make a decision, letting them know the help they can get from this bill and what it can do for them and their families.”
Allen and the bill’s other supporters believe that sort of education campaign will eventually pay off (though it remains an open question just how much resistance Bowser, who has long had close ties to the utility, will provide). But this whole episode is another illustration of why it’s so punishingly difficult for cities to make progress on clean energy issues when their own utilities are constantly working against them.
“If you just let the market handle who moves to electric and who stays on gas, it will be low-income households that bear the burden and get left behind,” Allen says. “This is going to put the District on the front edge of what it means to take climate action and do it in an equitable way.”