The Bend Bulletin's Guest column: Natural gas is not a fossil fuel to be simply phased out

Published 7:56 am Tuesday, June 2, 2026

By Kelly Fukai

CEO of the NW Gas Association

To read on the Bend Bulletin, click here.

The city of Bend is moving forward with a 20% “climate impact fee” on new homes built with natural gas equipment. Supporters say it’s time to “stop digging”, implying Bend is in a carbon hole. However, Bend isn’t in a hole, it is on a bridge. The real risk isn’t that Bend keeps digging — it’s that the city burns the bridge its citizens need before we get to the other side of it.

Natural gas is not simply a fossil fuel to be phased out on a fixed schedule. Today, it is the fuel that makes smart and targeted electrification possible. Every wind farm and solar array in Oregon depends on dispatchable gas generation to firm up the electric grid when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. The gas distribution system that heats Bend homes, food and water, is an extension of that same reliability backbone. Dismantling it faster than the electric grid can absorb the load doesn’t accelerate the energy transition—it destabilizes it.

This matters because Oregon’s grid is not ready for the energy load this fee assumes it can handle. Multiple regional studies have documented a tightening supply-demand balance driven by population growth, economic expansion, and electrification already underway. During the January 2024 cold snap, the Pacific Northwest relied on emergency measures and imported electricity to keep the lights on—while the natural gas system efficiently delivered 70% of the energy that kept homes warm. Direct use of natural gas is a peak capacity resource for the electric system. Policies that deter its use remove diversity and flexibility in providing customers the energy they need.

Accelerating electrification at the municipal level, without regard to regional capacity, also brings real costs. Electrification requires new generation (including multiday dispatchable resources), major upgrades to transmission and distribution infrastructure, and expanded peak capacity to meet winter and growing summer demand. Those investments cannot be built overnight, and their costs are ultimately borne by consumers. Recent utility filings in Oregon suggest that meeting statewide clean energy mandates will result in significant rate increases over the transition timeline. Further, testimony provided to the Bend City Council by the electric providers highlighted the challenges and costs associated with accelerated growth of the electric system in Bend. Against that reality, assumptions that electric rates will rise only modestly deserve closer scrutiny.

The deeper point is this: a managed transition that balances reliability, affordability and sustainability is not the same as no transition. Oregon has already set ambitious policy frameworks requiring utilities to meaningfully reduce their emissions over the coming decade. Those mandates are real and they are already reshaping how the energy system operates. Layering a city-level construction tax on top of that broader framework doesn’t accelerate the timeline—it creates a patchwork of local rules that complicates regional planning, raises costs, compromises reliability and undermines the coordinated approach that actually achieves emissions reductions at scale.

If Bend is serious about climate leadership — the more effective path is partnership, not penalty. That means working with energy providers on hybrid systems that give households flexibility as the grid strengthens. It means promoting weatherization and efficiency investments that reduce energy consumption regardless of fuel source. It means targeted electrification support for low-income households, funded by programs designed for that purpose, not by fees on new construction that constrain the housing supply. And it means coordinating with the state and regional utilities on the infrastructure buildout that any responsible energy transition requires.

Will Rogers was right that when you are in a hole, you should stop digging. But Oregon is not in a hole — it is in the middle of a bridge, with one end anchored in the energy system we have and the other end reaching toward the one we want. Natural gas is part of that bridge. The question is not whether we cross it, but whether we are wise enough to keep it intact and affordable until we reach the other side.

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