A Philadelphia Gas Works sign is pictured on South Broad Street. (Danya Henninger/Billy Penn)
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The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission has ruled that Philadelphia Gas Works is not entitled to internal communications — emails, texts and memos — from a coalition of climate advocacy groups opposing the utility’s current rate hike proposal. The PUC also rejected PGW’s attempt to obtain the number of the group’s members who are PGW customers, as well as communications with those individuals.
“This decision will help protect community groups interested in participating in Commission proceedings in the future from unconstitutional and intrusive discovery by utilities,” said Devin McDougall, supervising senior attorney at Earthjustice who represents the Energy Justice Advocates, a coalition of seven groups that are challenging aspects of PGW’s pending ratemaking case. “This is important because to solve the kind of problems that PGW is facing, we really need everyone at the table.”
The Energy Justice Advocates, which includes the nonprofits POWER Interfaith, Sierra Club, Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania, Clean Air Council, Vote Solar, PennEnvironment and the Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group, have asked the PUC to reject the utility’s proposed 13% rate hike and order the gas provider to adjust its business model to address its role in the growing climate crisis.
A spokesperson for PGW said the utility had no comment.
Parties to rate-making cases, as in other legal procedures, can ask for information from the utility, and vice versa. The purpose is to gain information to make their case or defend it.
Attorneys for PGW had told the court that the utility’s requests were reasonable and that it was seeking facts behind the Energy Justice Advocates’ public statements, as well as their court filings.
The advocates had countered that PGW’s requests for internal communications violated the First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom of association, and that granting PGW access to internal records would result in chilling public participation in rate-making cases.
In her order published June 16, the PUC’s Administrative Law Judge Eranda Vero wrote that, “the ability to have free and candid internal discussions on sensitive topics is essential to the effective exercise of First Amendment-protected rights to free association and free expression.”
The order also stated, “being forced to disclose such internal communications to the principal adversary in a litigation would seriously impair candid internal communications in the future; and (3) such impairment would have a severely negative impact on the exercise of their associational rights to advocate for their beliefs.”
The order stated that PGW did not show the information it sought would be “highly relevant” to the proceedings.
PGW did not appeal the ruling.
McDougall called the decision “a great result” and said it set a precedent for future ratemaking cases.
“The Commission benefits from the participation of many different public interest organizations in rate cases because they can bring a variety of different perspectives and expertise to the table and can help illuminate and develop the record on the merits of the utility proposal that the Commission is considering,” McDougall said.
PGW’s proposed rate hike for fiscal year 2026 would increase the average residential customer’s monthly bills by about $12 a month, from $92.60 to $104.61, according to the PUC.
The utility has also asked the PUC to allow a surcharge on customers’ bills when the winters are warmer than expected, a practice referred to as “weather normalization.”
In addition to weather normalization, the utility, for the first time, is seeking permission to apply “revenue normalization,” a potential surcharge to a customer’s bill should the weather normalization charge not be adequate to make up for any unanticipated losses.
The Energy Justice Advocates oppose “revenue normalization.”
“PGW has asked for a very large rate increase and for very significant changes to their revenue model that will essentially break the link between their sales of gas and their revenue,” McDougall said. “And the Energy Justice Advocates really want to make sure that the decision on this is informed by a long-term perspective. The changes that PGW is seeking in this case will have substantial long-term implications.”