A natural gas pipeline near Marquette. Via Ann Fisher on Flickr.
Modified Green Text Box with List
  • DTE CEO Jerry Norcia takes chair position at American Gas Association as lawmakers and environmental groups criticize it for downplaying the environmental and health risks of gas.
  • Ratepayer advocates highlight the group’s work fighting energy efficiency and electrification, and challenge claims that methane gas can help with energy transition.
  • DTE says carbon capture and storage can reduce climate impacts, but recent pipeline leaks raise concerns.

U.S. senators and advocates say a powerful gas industry lobbying group chaired by DTE Energy CEO Jerry Norcia is using Michigan ratepayers’ money to weaken energy efficiency rules that would lower bills while reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions as the nation tries to stave off the worst effects of the climate crisis. 

The lobbying group, the American Gas Association, is also fighting local bans on gas appliances, pushing for expansion of gas infrastructure and muddying climate science—tactics that are drawing criticism from several U.S. senators and public health groups and putting Norcia, who assumed an unpaid role as chair of the AGA’s board of directors in October, at the center of the decarbonization fight. 

Under Norcia, the AGA is downplaying the health and climate risks of so-called “natural gas,” United States senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said in an April press conference. 

“The [AGA] has known about the health harms of gas for decades but worked for years to mislead the public,” Markey said. “To make matters worse, the American Gas Association gets funding for its misinformation campaigns from your gas bills.”

Norcia, however, made a different case in a recent marketing video for the AGA, which represents over 200 gas utilities. In the video, Norcia insists gas played “a crucial role in helping the United States reach a lower carbon future” and touts the industry’s growth. 

DTE has said it will invest $3.7 million in gas infrastructure over the next four years and may add a new baseload gas power plant. Meanwhile, the AGA has advocated for Enbridge’s plan to place the Line 5 oil and liquified gas pipeline in a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac, which is opposed by environmental groups and Indigenous nations. 

AGA CEO Karen Harbart pushed back on the senators’ charges.

“Any claim that we have not been a leader in advancing environmental goals is simply not accurate,” she said in a statement to Planet Detroit, adding that natural gas utilities had significantly reduced their emissions over the last several decades. 

Yet, ratepayer advocates say DTE and the AGA’s spending helps utilities maintain a reliance on gas at the customer’s expense.

“We do see it as a conflict of interest or at odds with what’s in the best interests of customers,” James Gignac, Midwest senior policy manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Planet Detroit. With a continued expansion of natural gas, he said customers could be left paying for gas plants and infrastructure that are relatively expensive compared to renewables

There’s some evidence utilities are beginning to question the AGA’s message: New England’s Eversource recently left the group to focus on decarbonization and the Sierra Club has called on other utilities to do the same.

DTE spokesperson Jill M. Wilmot defended the company’s participation in the AGA in a statement to Planet Detroit: “DTE engages with these organizations to share best practices, help meet regulations and improve operations to better serve our customers.”

The company’s annual membership dues for the AGA were $730,000, Wilmot said. DTE  included these dues in its 2023 rate hike request, except for $36,000 which was used for lobbying.

The American Gas Association’s claims about natural gas

Environmental advocates say the American Gas Association is misleading the public about the climate impacts of gas.

Natural gas is mostly methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, although it persists for a shorter time period. A recent report by the environmental research group RMI found that a leakage rate as low as 0.2% puts the climate impacts from gas at the same level as coal. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that around 1% of gas production is lost to leakage, but experts have cautioned that methane leaks are poorly accounted for.

“It’s not a climate solution because, although natural gas emits less carbon than coal, it’s still a very potent greenhouse gas,” Gignac said, noting that emissions from combustion in homes and businesses add to the impact from greenhouse gas emissions from gas plants and leakages throughout the system.

Meanwhile, the AGA says gas is essential for supplying reliable power. 

Gignac said UCS modeling found that the U.S. would likely need natural gas only for “peaker plants” as it transitions to cleaner energy. Electric utilities often fire up these highly polluting plants during high-demand periods or when other sources aren’t available.

Otherwise, according to UCS, little additional gas infrastructure should be necessary. Its modeling found that expanding wind, solar, and energy storage and upgrading transmission infrastructure were far less expensive ways to meet future energy needs.

Carbon capture an ‘unproven technology’

Gas companies often tout the potential of carbon capture and storage to remove CO2 from gas power plants and store it in underground reservoirs. Norcia included this idea in a recent pitch for a new gas power plant in or around Monroe County. 

However, it’s unclear if CCS will prove a workable technology for gas plants. Only a limited number of carbon capture projects have been developed worldwide, with no successful projects in the power sector,  according to a 2022 study from the nonprofit Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. The report found the goal of 90% emissions reduction was “unreachable in practice.”

Natural gas with CCS that captures at least 90% of CO2 emissions is classified as “clean energy” under Michigan’s 2023 energy package. Wilmot, the DTE spokesperson, said gas would help ensure reliable power when wind and solar aren’t producing it.

Gignac said that CCS may be needed for some limited applications in the industrial sector, where decarbonizing certain processes is very difficult. But he added it hasn’t been proven cost-effective at the power generation scale.

The cost of electricity from gas and coal power plants with CCS is 1.5 to 2 times more expensive than wind or solar, a 2023 report from IEEFA found.

And a recent pipeline leak in Louisiana has raised concerns about the safety and effectiveness of the technology, which the AGA has pushed as a climate solution. The ExxonMobil pipeline in Sulphur, LA, leaked 2,548 barrels of CO2, which took over two hours to fix. 

CO2 is an asphyxiant that can replace oxygen in the air and cause death. Dozens were hospitalized in 2020 after a pipeline in Satartia, Mississippi, released 31,000 barrels of CO2.

American Gas Association fights energy efficiency and electrification measures

Since the 1930s, the gas industry has used home appliances to get gas into homes, most notably with the “cooking with gas” marketing campaign that touted the benefits of gas stoves. The AGA has lobbied against regulations that would improve home appliance efficiency, fought building codes that would facilitate electrification and undermined health warnings about the dangers of gas in the home.

This month, the organization filed a legal brief against Department of Energy rules that would improve the efficiency of gas furnaces and water heaters, saying the changes would limit consumer choice. The new standards for gas furnaces and those used in mobile homes could save customers $25 billion over 30 years and cut harmful methane and CO2 emissions, the DOE found.

“The older technology would lead to more harmful indoor emissions,” Xavier Boatright, deputy legislative director for the Sierra Club, told Planet Detroit.

Since the 1970s, research has shown that gas stoves increase indoor nitrogen dioxide, which is associated with respiratory diseases, especially asthma. More recent research has found 13% of childhood asthma cases are attributable to gas stoves. Still, the AGA used a tobacco industry playbook of funding its own research and downplaying the health risks of gas.

The AGA’s website currently states that “The association between the presence of a natural gas cooking appliance and increases in asthma in children is not supported by data-driven investigations” and that “gas cooking appliances represent a minor source of (nitrogen dioxide).”

It and other groups also successfully lobbied the International Code Council in 2024 to exclude energy efficiency measures that would have facilitated building electrification and technologies like heat pumps and electrical vehicle chargers. The ICC’s code is the predominant code used in the United States and some foreign countries.

The International Energy Agency says electrification, which enables technologies to use electricity rather than fossil fuels, is a key strategy for addressing the emissions from buildings that account for more than one-third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

“AGA as an institution continues to be a huge barrier to electrification and the clean energy transition that we certainly need to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change,” said Karlee Weinmann, research and communications manager for the watchdog group Energy and Policy Institute.

Representatives for the AGA did not reply to questions about the group’s lobbying around energy efficiency or its messaging on the health risks of gas.

The future of natural gas

Gignac noted that in light of Michigan’s climate goal of achieving 100% clean energy by 2050 and the health and safety issues raised by natural gas, Michigan utility regulators ought to take a harder look at the future of the gas system in the state and evaluate utility spending to make sure lower-income customers aren’t left paying the cost for gas infrastructure after other residents switch to electrical appliances.

Illinois instituted such a process with its “Future of Gas Workshop” led by the Illinois Commerce Commission. It will develop a plan for gas utilities and future infrastructure investments and evaluate the impacts of the state’s decarbonization and electrification goals on the gas system.

And Minnesota requires gas utilities to have a ten-year plan that looks at the cost-effectiveness of new investments and considers the social cost of carbon pollution.

“What’s important is to really scrutinize any new investments in gas infrastructure because of the risk of over-investing or over-building,” Gignac said. “If these plants are very rarely used, then customers are stuck paying for them much more than if the utility had made a smaller, less risky investment.”

Correction: A previous version of this article referred to a rate increase on customers’ bills that came from an electric rate increase not a gas rate increase.

Sign me up for Planet Detroit’s free weekly email newsletter

Give us your email, and we’ll give you our award-winning free weekly email newsletter on Fridays

Brian Allnutt is a senior reporter and contributing editor at Planet Detroit. He covers the climate crisis, environmental justice, politics and open space.