Cities Confront Climate Challenge: How to Move from Gas to Electricity?
Ending the use of fossil fuels to heat homes and buildings is a key challenge for cities hoping to achieve net-zero emissions. Nowhere is that more evident than in Philadelphia, where technical and financial hurdles and a reluctant gas company stand in the way of decarbonization.
In 1836, Philadelphians mostly used whale oil and candles to light their homes and businesses. That year, the newly formed Philadelphia Gas Works caused a stir when it lit 46 downtown street lamps with gas made from coal in its plant on the Schuylkill River. By the end of the Civil War, public thoroughfares and private dwellings in the core of most large Eastern cities were illuminated by gas, supplied through cast iron pipes buried beneath the busy streets and the whale oil lighting industry was nearly dead.
(Next City ) March 4, 2021
Solar panels are among the projects green banks could fund. Image by Jose G. Ortega Castro on Unsplash
A version of this article first appeared in Next City.
If you’ve ever looked at an electrical bill in New York or Connecticut, you may have noticed the vague-sounding “system benefit charge.” Right now in New York, it’s 0.5238 cents per kilowatt-hour for a $60 electric bill, all other taxes and fees included, the system benefit charge comes out to 77 cents. In Connecticut it hovers between $7-$10 a year per household.
Some, if not most, of those dollars end up in the state’s green bank. Only a few states and localities have a green bank, and not all of them are funded the same way. They’re not banks in the depository sense they don’t offer checking or savings accounts. Instead, they’re state-sponsored entities that use their dedicated funding sources to make loans, provide credit enhancements or use other financial mechanisms to