TRIAGE AND TRANSITION
The Gas Transition Allies envision a rapid path to an emissions-free future while ensuring safety, health, quality jobs, and equity.
We raise awareness about the impacts of using gas, from educating the public to equipping decision makers.
We collaborate with others to develop, implement, and advocate for innovative solutions.
We share a central goal of triaging the worst gas leaks while transitioning to safer, healthier, renewable energy.
Above all, we advance clean energy solutions for everyone.
Energy and Equity
Our strategy focuses on shifting investments from the unsafe, unhealthy gas system to clean energy solutions for all.
Without thoughtful policy intervention and utility-scale solutions, low-income customers will be least able to electrify their homes and access clean energy. They will be even more burdened by the health impacts and higher costs of continuing to use gas, while others who can afford alternatives will choose cleaner, cheaper energy for themselves.
Triage the Current Gas System and Transition to Solutions We Have Now.
Given the many problems of relying on gas as an energy source and the urgency of the climate crisis, the Gas Transition Allies developed a strategy of Triage and Transition that guides our work.
TRIAGE: Repair the largest and most hazardous leaks.
Rather than replace all old gas pipes, use resources wisely to target the leakiest pipes, improve safety, and reduce methane emissions quickly.
TRANSITION: Accelerate a managed, just transition off of gas.
Invest in cleaner, safer, and more cost-effective heating and cooking solutions for everyone instead of doubling down on gas infrastructure, creating huge inequities, and endangering our health, safety, and livable climate.
Triage and Transition are complementary, simultaneous efforts that must go hand-in-hand so we can transition rapidly off gas while ensuring the remaining system is as safe and nonpolluting as possible.
Energy and Jobs
Our strategy also supports quality jobs, advancing solutions for workers in the gas industry in particular.
Currently, Massachusetts relies on thousands of workers to build and maintain the gas system.
These highly skilled and trained workers need to be an integral part of a just transition to renewable energy systems.
We look for opportunities to learn from labor leaders who are working to build a clean energy economy with quality jobs in clean energy and a strong safety net for workers who are displaced from the fossil fuel industry.
The Gas Transition Allies align our advocacy with labor standards that ensure:
Comprehensive training and immediate access to employment opportunities in the clean energy industry so that every gas worker who wants to be a part of the transition will have the needed skills.
Workforce standards and accountability to ensure that clean energy projects receiving public investment create quality, family-sustaining jobs through the state’s prevailing wage law.
Strong labor standards including family-supporting wages and benefits, health and safety measures, and community benefit agreements.
A transparent procurement process that prioritizes bids with plans to enhance workforce diversity, equity, and inclusion; apprentice training in order to create career pathways; certification of compliance with anti-discrimination laws, wage and hour and employee misclassification laws; and a plan to ensure labor harmony and standards during all phases of the construction, development, and operation of the project.
Access for people in Environmental Justice communities to jobs in the clean energy industry.
Make Clean Energy a Reality For All
Support The Future of Heat bill that creates a pathway off of gas and funds equitable clean energy solutions for heating and cooling our homes.
Learn about false solutions that extend our reliance on fossil fuels.
Instead of investing in clean, renewable energy, gas companies are pushing more gas in the form of hydrogen and other gasses they claim are “decarbonized.”