| 180 | The Gas Company’s Logic | 2010-01-22 |
Piedmont Gas is the gas utility for Nashville. As a conservation measure they want to decouple the price of gas from the amount of gas used. The gas company’s proposal is to charge more per cubic foot for the residents who use less gas. If that was the policy, Piedmont would use some of their additional profits to campaign for residents to use less gas (and thus pay more for the volume used.)
Does this make sense to anybody?
Piedmont Gas already campaigns for lower gas usage. Evidently they don’t realize a quite effective procedure is already in place. It is called a bill. Each month we receive a bill for the cubic feet of gas that we use. We pay it; but look for ways to use less and thus spend less. What a great conservationist campaign to lower gas usage!
The gas company’s new plan (to charge more per cubic foot for those who use less) would be an incentive to use more gas. If it costs more to use less, then why bother conserving?
Real conservation measures would be to either charge the residents who use more gas - even more for the gas they use; or, charge the residents who are conserving and using less gas - even less for the paltry amounts of gas they use.
Of course the utility company does not want the consumer to use less gas. Instead they want to penalize those who do use less energy. Now, that conservation effort is the gas company’s logic - at its best.
Happy solar trails.
link - http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100121/
NEWS02/1210359/1009/NEWS