Bills, bills, bills … life is getting more expensive for B.C. families who heat and cook with gas.

Private gas utility FortisBC jacked up its prices on January 1, 2025. The rate hikes will cost the average customer an extra $14.25 per month, the company claims. But this is just a taste of things to come, as new pipelines and LNG projects push gas bills even higher.

FortisBC’s “delivery” fee has gone up 14.5 per cent, from $6.53 per gigajoule to $7.48. Meanwhile the “storage and transport” fee has more than tripled to $1.40 per gigajoule. (A gigajoule is roughly the amount of energy in 26 litres of gasoline, or two standard BBQ tanks of propane.)

FortisBC says customers must pay higher gas bills for two main reasons: to upgrade its pipeline network and cover the increased cost of “renewable natural gas”. Meanwhile, parent company Fortis Inc. raked in $420 million in profits last quarter, up seven per cent from the previous year.

In other words, B.C. families are paying to:

  • build infrastructure for a private company
  • greenwash fossil fuel expansion (more on “renewable gas” below)
  • line the pockets of Fortis executives and shareholders, led by the Royal Bank of Canada.

But that still doesn’t include the impact LNG exports will have on ratepayers. Just like in Australia and the United States, B.C. households could see gas bills double or even triple once our domestic gas supply is linked to volatile overseas markets, later in 2025.

Customers on the hook for Woodfibre LNG

FortisBC admits it’s raising gas bills to pay for pipelines, including projects in the Shuswap, Kootenays, Lower Mainland and Sunshine Coast. Fortis Inc. says capital spending is $400 million higher than expected this year, “driven by the timing of expenditures associated with the Eagle Mountain Pipeline project.” That’s the line being built to supply fracked gas to the Woodfibre LNG export terminal near Squamish.

The Eagle Mountain project includes drilling a tunnel nine kilometres long under the Squamish river, wide enough to drive a truck through. Tunnel work ground to a halt in November, before starting up again January 2. These delays have likely pushed the project far over its initial cost estimate of $341 million.

Thanks to a 2014 cabinet order from former B.C. premier Christy Clark, FortisBC gets to pass on the costs of the Eagle Mountain pipeline to its customers.

“Woodfibre LNG would be responsible for any excess costs related to construction of the gas line,” the company said in a release in December. But it’s current Fortis customers who are paying the up-front cost – for a pipeline to deliver gas to companies in Asia, not homes, farms or businesses in B.C.

Why are we paying for gas burned in Iowa?

FortisBC also says it’s raising household gas bills to cover “the increasing blend of Renewable Natural Gas (RNG)”. But like the gas headed to Squamish for export, FortisBC customers don’t actually get the product they’re paying for.

“As of January 1, 2025, all FortisBC customers will have two per cent of their gas designated as RNG, up from one per cent,” Fortis says. Then in small print: “When RNG is added to North America’s natural gas system, it mixes with conventional natural gas. This means we’re unable to direct RNG to a specific customer.”

What does that mean? Fortis is paying Shell in Iowa, BP in Pennsylvania, Walker Industries in Ontario and other big companies to capture methane from landfills, sewage systems and agricultural waste. That gas is blended into the local gas supply and burned – it is never delivered to British Columbia.

But by paying other companies to add biogas to pipelines in Iowa or Pennsylvania, Fortis is allowed to claim it’s reducing planet-heating emissions worldwide. That’s up for debate. What’s clear is RNG costs far more to produce than methane from fracking. And it’s FortisBC customers paying extra for the company’s green claims.

LNG exports could upend B.C. gas market

By far the biggest impact on B.C. gas bills is yet to come. As U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm warned in December, “unfettered exports of LNG would increase wholesale domestic natural gas prices by over 30 per cent.” And B.C. is about to start exporting gas from the LNG Canada terminal in Kitimat later this year.

Until now, B.C. customers have paid very low prices for “natural gas”. That’s because the province is home to major fracking operations. Only nine per cent of the methane gas extracted in B.C. is burned in B.C. The rest is piped to our neighbours in Washington, or to Alberta to boil tar-like bitumen out of the oil sands.

That’s about to change, as gas producers chase higher prices in Asian markets controlled by companies in Japan and China. Once B.C. fracking operations are connected to export pipelines and LNG terminals, wholesale prices are likely to lift.

FortisBC buys gas from those producers, at whatever price is set by the market. Then, they pass on those costs to customers. Fortis holds a monopoly on fossil gas sales in southern B.C. So if events halfway across the world raise gas prices in Japan or China, families in B.C. will pay higher gas bills, too.

No better time to switch

The health benefits of electric induction cooking are reinforced by study after study around the world. Breathing fossil fuel exhaust from gas stoves damages the brain, lungs and heart and is a major contributor to childhood asthma. But the financial risks of burning gas at home are also becoming clear.

FortisBC is already raising its prices to pay for new pipelines and expensive biogas operations across North America. That doesn’t yet include the price pressure from LNG Canada and future facilities. Many Australian customers saw their gas bills triple after the country started exporting LNG.

Now is the time to burn less gas and reduce our exposure to rising prices. That can be accomplished through better insulation, more efficient appliances – or by switching off gas entirely, and powering our homes with renewable electricity.