Millions spent on promotional ads
The utility has been trying to gain new customers, including switching some business customers off of the city’s steam loop and onto newly installed gas lines.
In materials filed for the recent ratemaking case, PGW explained how it maintains and tries to expand its customer base.
“PGWs Marketing Department actively pursues all new business opportunities, including but not limited to residential, commercial and industrial sectors. Sales Representatives are tasked with annual sales goals, achieved via the acquisition of new customers and the expansion of an existing customer’s volumetric demand,” reads the document. “The Department actively participates in trade ally organizations with the intent to understand emerging technology and leverage our peers’ best practices. In addition, the department facilitates customer seminars where new and existing customers are presented with customer testimonials, proof of concepts, and the opportunity to network with customers who have adopted emerging natural gas technologies.”
Also, in the rate case filing, PGW did identify competition from the electrical utilities and the steam loop, operated by Vicinity Energy. Vicinity’s Gray’s Ferry plant uses natural gas to generate steam, which is sent through an underground system of pipes to heat commercial buildings in Center City and West Philadelphia.
The Right-to-Know documents obtained by The Energy and Policy Institute, an environmental nonprofit organization that tracks utility spending and advocates for renewable energy, includes invoices from PGW’s marketing contractor AVC Media Group. Those documents show the spending and examples of the ads, but do not break down spending by specific campaign or effort.
“That being said, we know that this is an amount totaling millions of dollars every year,” said Gabriel Straus, a current fellow with EPI.
The invoices and emails obtained through the Right-to-Know documents show funds spent on billboards, radio ads and bus stop ads.
Straus said the brand promoting campaigns, including the free Phillies hats, “smacks of greenwashing.”
“The city of Philadelphia has a statutory target of reaching net zero emissions sometime in the next few decades, and the existence of PGW as a municipally-owned fossil fuel utility is inconsistent with that,” Straus said. “This greenwashing effort seems to me to be aimed at securing their license to operate as a natural gas utility and for staving off any potential attempts to regulate the use of methane gas.”
An email also obtained through the Right-to-Know documents sheds some light on the campaign’s target audience.
In March 2024, when the ad company, AVC, sought approval to place a “Fueling the Future” ad with the Phillies that summer, PGW’s chief of staff and senior vice president Melanie McCottry responded with the question: “How is fueling the future connected with sports?”
AVC replied that sports are “one of the best places to hit white collar workers, families with college education, management in companies and small business owners.”
It’s not unusual for companies to promote products at sports events, but the issue for people like Hogan, who wants to see a transition to renewable energy, is whether a city-owned utility should be using ratepayer dollars to do so.
“PGW is publicly owned, it should serve the people, and make sure that our homes are warm in the winter,” Hogan said. “But in this case, the goal of these ads is to make it so you don’t demand a true renewable energy future where we’re not relying on fossil fuels.”
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