Chattanooga Gas filed a financial review of its 2023 revenues, operational costs, and investments with the Tennessee Public Utility Commission (TPUC), including seeking a rate increase.
Through TPUC’s Annual Rate Review Mechanism (ARM), the company "seeks to adjust 2024 rates in order to recoup the cost of work performed to meet the region’s growing demand for natural gas service while continuing to maintain a clean, safe, reliable, and affordable natural gas system."
Officials said, "The current filing requests rate adjustments due to investment initiatives that strengthened the safety and reliability of Chattanooga Gas’ infrastructure, even on the coldest days of the year, and provided uninterrupted service for Chattanooga Gas customers during extreme winter weather.
"Additional investments in 2023 supported more than 1,100 new residential and commercial customers and their demand, as well as provided greater capacity to high-growth residential, commercial, and industrial areas. Chattanooga Gas is a proud partner with local businesses in making these investments to continue to make Hamilton and Bradley counties such an attractive community to live and work.
"The company’s pipeline replacement program not only enhances the reliability of its infrastructure, but also has positive impacts for the environment. Pipeline replacement throughout the industry has the single largest impact on methane emissions reductions in the industry’s distribution segment."
“At Chattanooga Gas, we are committed to making strategic infrastructure investments which enable us to meet the evolving needs of our 71,000 customers and support the thriving Chattanooga area economy,” said Pedro Cherry, president and CEO of Chattanooga Gas. “Our ARM filing demonstrates our commitment to working with TPUC to bring essential natural gas service to homes and businesses, while keeping our customers at the center of everything we do.”
Officials also said, "To minimize impact on customers’ bills, Chattanooga Gas is limiting its rate request based on the voluntary rate cap proposed by the company and approved by TPUC in 2021 for rate filings made in 2021 through 2024. Under this voluntary rate cap, the 2024 rate increase to the typical residential customer’s total average bill if approved would be $4.21 a month."
A TPUC decision on the ARM filing is expected in August. Any new rate adjustments likely would go into effect in September.