The video featured Morgan Hood, the new product development manager at a small utility once called Vermont Gas Systems, now known simply as VGS, that serves about 55,000 customers in its titular state. For 80 minutes Hood described how the company was working to reinvent itself as a “thermal solutions provider.” As part of that mission, it had recently started selling and leasing electric heat pump water and space heaters to its customers to help them reduce their gas use.

As a reporter who has covered natural gas utilities’ expansion plans and the industry’s all-out war on electrification, I was stunned. The programs alone were unusual, but what surprised me more was the way Hood talked about them.

“If we want to continue to serve our customers, which we do, significant changes are necessary,” she said, describing a “dramatic shift” in public sentiment toward natural gas in Vermont. “We know we're not going to be expanding our customer base with natural gas customers in the future.”