Home About Southwest Gas Sustainability Environmental Efforts
While efforts within our Company continue to reduce emissions, it is just as important for our team to work with customers to help them achieve their own reduction goals. Recent studies indicate that vehicle emissions rank as the primary contributor to higher emissions in the atmosphere.
Because CNG is a clean and affordable alternative to diesel, we continue to encourage customers to convert their fleets to CNG. Southwest recently revised its natural gas vehicle website to help current and future customers realize these and other benefits, including the stable pricing of CNG and the potential for reduced vehicle maintenance costs.
Among the many new initiatives the Company is pursuing is our effort to add renewable natural gas (RNG) to our supply portfolio. Like renewable energy derived from solar and wind, RNG is created by taking emissions from waste materials and converting it into clean energy. When trash, animal waste or sewage decompose, a gas called methane is naturally created as a byproduct. This gas is lighter than air and rises into the atmosphere. It is also the main component of the natural gas used in homes and businesses.
In some instances, the waste can be collected into a container known as a biodigester. Here, methane is captured, preventing its release into the atmosphere. The gas is then cleaned and conditioned to pipeline quality standards and is delivered for direct use by customers to heat their homes, enjoy a warm shower or cook a nice homemade meal.
RNG can be used in everything that already uses natural gas. Because this renewable energy is sourced from a variety of organic byproducts, it is generally considered carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative. Its use creates no additional carbon dioxide emissions, which would otherwise be flared at the source or, even worse, vented into the atmosphere. Our Company has been working with several customers in our service territory that either create or want to use renewable natural gas supplies.
For the past several years, Southwest has been working closely with the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada to incorporate RNG into their fleet. In 2020, an application was submitted to the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada for approval to proceed. Partners like these appreciate the significant environmental benefits that RNG provides.
Several studies completed by peer utilities indicate that inclusion of RNG in gas supply portfolios can achieve aggressive greenhouse gas reduction goals at a fraction of the cost of converting end-use appliances to renewable electricity. Moreover, the AGA completed a study last year that concluded moving away from natural gas appliances toward electricity could cost upwards of $1.2 trillion nationally, raising average household utility costs by up to $910 per year. Our pursuit of exciting new RNG supplies will help ensure natural gas service continues to play a key role in achieving aggressive carbon emission reduction goals for decades to come.
As part of our management philosophy, the Company consistently evaluates ways to improve operational efficiencies. As Southwest transitions toward the use of more digital environments, it has also sought a way to reduce paper and transportation costs. In 2019, after a thorough analysis, Southwest determined that such an opportunity existed by adjusting our internal mail systems. By moving daily interoffice mail delivery to a weekly schedule, Southwest will save approximately $228,000 annually. Implementing this new delivery schedule led to more efficient routes driven by our fleet, improved accuracy and fewer miles driven overall. The savings also translated into a greenhouse gas reduction equivalent of planting 1,500 trees a year.
The introduction of greater technology and changes in our overall processes allow us to serve our customers better today than ever before. With the rollout of our call-ahead program — which notifies customers when a technician is on their way to perform service — we have reduced the number of multiple service requests or callbacks. These reductions allow us to serve more customers in a shorter time frame and reduce emissions produced from multiple visits to the same location.
Southwest saw additional improved operational efficiency through the introduction of an electronic signature management system, which allows for digital signatures on agreements with customers, vendors and for internal purposes. By the end of 2019, our system reported a 300% increase in efficiency from the beginning of the year by reducing the amount of time that it takes to complete an agreement from nearly 3,000 minutes to just over 800. This system also added security to ensure the validity of signers and encryption of the documents. We continue to evaluate what other benefits have been realized through this improvement, including reduced costs and GHG savings due to diminished demand for physical delivery.
At Southwest, we make concerted efforts to minimize emissions resulting from intentional releases of natural gas through reductions in purging and other processes in compliance with regulatory requirements. In California, our natural gas operations segment participates in a specific leakage abatement program and reports annual emissions to the California Public Utilities Commission.