Tech Talk | Non-pipeline alternatives for gas infrastructure upgrades

There are many ‘non-pipeline alternatives’ for gas system decarbonisation but no one-size-fits-all solution and current projects reflect diverse energy policy goals.

Across the US and elsewhere, spending on gas distribution infrastructure has increased substantially in the last 10 years, including major spending on programmes to replace old gas lines with new ones.

This incurs billions of dollars of cost each year that risks becoming stranded in the future as gas use declines.

Conceptually similar to ‘non-wires alternatives’ for electricity grids, ‘non-pipeline alternatives’ for gas grids are an emerging collection of solutions that can defer, reduce or avoid the need for construction or upgrades to the system.

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But while non-wire alternatives are about optimising the use of the current system, non-pipeline alternatives are more about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

As such they should become a key opportunity in the focus of gas utilities as they seek to optimise and decarbonise their infrastructure.

In a new paper, Non-Pipeline Alternatives: Emerging Opportunities in Planning for U.S. Gas System Decarbonization, National Grid in the US and RMI have investigated nine case studies from the US and Europe, with the aim to better understand how non-pipeline alternatives have been most effectively implemented and the challenges to scaling up these projects as part of the clean energy transition.

Non-pipeline alternative projects

An example of a non-pipeline alternative is projects by National Grid to transition some upstate New York customers to geothermal heating systems, while another is Pacific Gas & Electric’s decommissioning of 35km of gas transmission pipe by converting customers from gas.

Other utilities in the US advancing projects include Con Edison, Rochester Gas and Electric and Xcel.

In Europe, municipal clean heat planning is prevalent or required in multiple countries including the Netherlands and Switzerland. Zurich is the only example of a city that has completed a neighbourhood-scale decommissioning to date but other cities in Switzerland and elsewhere are working to follow suit.

While most of the projects have been small and widespread adoption has run into barriers including issues with customer engagement and policy limits, nevertheless they represent a critical momentum for utilities to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets, according to the paper.

Integrated energy planning

A top finding in the paper is that integrated energy planning will be key to achieving climate goals cost-effectively and equitably.

Integrated energy planning is the practice of incorporating critical interactions between gas, electricity and customer energy systems into utility and energy planning processes and thus taking account of their interdependencies to achieve net zero goals.

However, to conduct such planning is likely to require regulatory support to enable cross-utility data sharing and decision-making as well as investment in new tools and capabilities.

Other findings are that the current non-pipeline alternative projects reflect diverse energy policy goals and energy system characteristics, necessitating unique solutions to meet each jurisdiction’s energy needs, and there is no one-size-fits-all cost-benefit analysis for utilities to apply to analyse their impacts on consumers, on meeting emissions goals and on achieving other societal goals.

Instead, there is a range of criteria to weigh, including gas asset risk and hydraulic feasibility, electricity capacity, benefit-cost criteria, customer propensity for new technology adoption and community factors.

Another finding is that projects can be funded through a series of different sources while protecting customers’ long-term affordability, including federal, state, and local funding and electricity and gas rates.

And perhaps not surprisingly, individual customer persuasion to reach 100% participation is not a scalable non-pipeline alternative strategy.

Under the current regulatory framework, non-pipeline alternatives that avoid infrastructure replacement require voluntary and coordinated conversion of 100% of customers on the segment from gas to all-electric equipment. To date, no US utility has successfully completed this type of project for those serving more than five customers, the study found.

Have you been deploying non-pipeline alternatives? Let us know.

Jonathan Spencer Jones

Specialist writer
Smart Energy International

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