The role of natural gas and its future in New Brunswick

Insights with Don Mills and David Campbell- An Acadia Broadcasting Podcast

This week Gilles Volpé, President of NB Gas with Liberty Utilities joined Don and David on the Insights podcast. Liberty Utilities is the natural gas distribution company in New Brunswick. Gilles provides an important tutorial on the sources and uses of natural gas now and into the future. On an energy equivalent basis, New Brunswick currently uses as much natural gas as it does electricity. Most large industrial companies across the province use it. In southern New Brunswick, almost all hospitals, schools, government buildings and other big commercial organizations heat with gas. A considerable amount of electricity is already produced using natural gas and NB Power is building a new gas-fired generation facility in the Moncton region. Where does the gas come from? Unfortunately, mostly from Alberta and the southern United States. In many cases it costs more to transport the gas thousands of kilometres than the cost of the gas itself. We talk about the potential to green the gas system in the years ahead through renewable sources and other topics.