Story · The Gas Works

PGW's slow pivot is the city's biggest energy job.

Philadelphia Gas Works is the largest municipally owned gas utility in the country, and the city that owns it has promised carbon neutrality by 2050. Squaring those two facts is a decades-long job, and this week it is back on the council's agenda.

By the Renewable Energy Philadelphia editorsDateline: PhiladelphiaSept. 24, 2026

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Flat illustration of a Philadelphia warehouse rooftop with four rows of solar panels, a riveted water tower, and a brick facade below — **FIGURE A.** A warehouse roof in the industrial corridor, the quiet workhorse of commercial solar. Roofs like this carry most of the city's new panels.

Stories

Every story dated and filed to a source. The running list of what we have covered so far.

J-082NOV 02
2026

Grid
Where the wires can take more solar: reading PECO's hosting capacity map

Before a rowhouse or warehouse roof can connect, the local feeder has to have room.
J-081NOV 01
2026

Solar
The biggest empty roofs in the Delaware Valley sit over I-95

Warehouse roofs along the logistics corridors are some of the region's best solar real estate.
J-080OCT 31
2026

Grid
The transmission PJM is building for load it did not see coming

A yearly planning process called RTEP decides which high-voltage lines get built across the mid-Atlantic.
J-079OCT 30
2026

Markets
The businesses PJM pays to switch off on the worst days

On the tightest hours of the year, the grid will pay a warehouse or a hospital to use less.
J-078OCT 29
2026

Buildings
C-PACE: the clean-energy loan that rides along with your tax bill

Philadelphia's Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy program lets a building owner borrow for solar or efficiency and repay it as an assessment on the property.
J-077OCT 28
2026

Markets
The auction behind PECO's Price to Compare

PECO does not invent the generation rate on your bill.
J-076OCT 27
2026

Buildings
The tune-up law: Philadelphia asks big buildings to fix, not just report

Benchmarking makes large Philadelphia buildings report their energy use.
J-075OCT 26
2026

Solar
Pennsylvania's Solar for All money is spoken for, and Philadelphia is near the front of the line

A large federal grant is meant to put solar on low income homes across the state.
J-074OCT 24
2026

Policy
Pennsylvania's carbon market is stuck in court

The state tried to make power plants pay for carbon through a regulation.
J-073OCT 23
2026

Markets
The city's solar farm is two hours west, and here is how to check it

Philadelphia buys the output of a solar project in Adams County to help power its own buildings.
J-072OCT 22
2026

Wind
The turbines go to sea. Their foundations are rolled on the Delaware.

Some of the heavy steel for Mid-Atlantic offshore wind is fabricated at the Paulsboro Marine Terminal on the Delaware River.
J-071OCT 20
2026

Grid
Eddystone wants to quit. The grid south of the city isn't ready.

The aging plant on the Delaware has filed to shut down, but PJM can keep it running until the wires catch up.
J-070OCT 19
2026

Markets
The Price to Compare, and the green plans sold next to it

Every PECO bill carries a default supply rate called the Price to Compare.
J-069OCT 18
2026

Bioenergy
The sewage plant on the Delaware that runs on its own gas

A city sewage plant in the Northeast turns sludge into methane and burns it for its own power and heat.
J-068OCT 17
2026

Grid
Why every new solar farm and battery waits in line at Valley Forge

No new solar farm or battery connects to the regional grid until PJM finishes studying it, and that study, run from Valley Forge, has become the real wait.
J-067OCT 16
2026

Grid
At the Navy Yard, the utility is the campus itself

The former shipyard in South Philadelphia runs a privately owned electrical system with its own substations.
J-066OCT 15
2026

Markets
The certificate your solar roof prints, and what it sells for

Your panels make two products at once: the power you use, and a credit the state makes PECO buy.
J-065OCT 14
2026

Geothermal
PGW studied trading some gas pipes for geothermal loops

Philadelphia Gas Works, the largest city-owned gas utility in the country, put networked geothermal on the table in a diversification study.
J-064OCT 13
2026

Markets
The capacity auction that moved PECO's supply charge

PJM's capacity auction cleared near record highs.
J-063OCT 12
2026

Policy
The workforce bottleneck nobody advertises

Installers across the Delaware Valley say the holdup is not hardware, it is trained hands.
J-062OCT 11
2026

Grid
PJM's hardest hour is moving to the winter morning, and the city feels it

The regional grid was built around hot August afternoons.
J-061OCT 10
2026

Policy
Buying power together in Philadelphia: co-ops, group deals, and the fine print

Group buying and co-ops let neighbors purchase electricity or solar together.
J-060OCT 09
2026

Buildings
Rain gardens, tree trenches, and the energy they quietly spare

Philadelphia's green stormwater program was built to keep sewage out of the rivers.
J-059OCT 08
2026

Solar
Solar in a historic district: the review nobody reads

If your rowhouse sits in one of Philadelphia's local historic districts, the city gets a look at your roof before the panels go up.
J-058OCT 07
2026

Grid
The buses that already run on wires, and the ones that might

SEPTA's Northeast trackless trolleys are the cleanest buses it owns.
J-057OCT 06
2026

Buildings
Big buildings in Philadelphia now report their energy. Then what?

The city's benchmarking law has produced several years of public data.
J-056OCT 05
2026

Grid
PECO's wires plan is a rate case in waiting

The utility files multi-year plans for what it builds into the grid.
J-055OCT 04
2026

Grid
Shore power on the Delaware: the port's long extension cord

Ships at the Philadelphia berths can shut off their diesels and plug into the grid instead.
J-054OCT 03
2026

Buildings
Heat pumps in brick rowhouses: the questions installers hear

Party walls, radiators, and 100-amp panels shape almost every rowhouse retrofit in Philadelphia.
J-053OCT 02
2026

Solar
A capped landfill is the best bad roof in the city

Closed landfills are some of the only large surfaces in Philadelphia that solar can actually use.
J-052OCT 01
2026

Policy
Pennsylvania's net metering cap quietly changed the solar math

Pennsylvania ties the size of a net-metered system to how much power a home uses, and a second, harder-to-see cap is what the reform fight is really about.
J-051SEP 30
2026

Solar
The permit is the project: solar on a Philadelphia rowhouse

The panels are the easy part.
J-050SEP 29
2026

Grid
The subway makes electricity when it brakes

Every time a train on the El or the Broad Street Line slows down, its motors turn into generators.
J-049SEP 28
2026

Policy
Pennsylvania finally has community solar. Philadelphia is the test.

Pennsylvania spent years as a community solar holdout.
J-048SEP 27
2026

Hydro
The Schuylkill Made Power Once. Some Sites Want To Again.

Historic mill dams line the river, from Fairmount to Manayunk.
J-047SEPT 24
2026

PGW
PGW's slow pivot is the city's biggest energy job

The Gas Works keeps hot water and heat on in hundreds of thousands of homes. The city's climate math says it has to change shape. The fight is over the order of operations, and it resumed this week. How it goes will show up in heating bills across the city.
J-046SEPT 22
2026

Solar
Warehouse roofs are the corridor's quiet solar frontier

Big flat roofs, big single electric meters, no tenant votes. Why North Philly industrial real estate keeps signing up for arrays while the rowhouse block waits on paperwork.
J-045SEPT 19
2026

Port
Shore power at the port is a job half-hung

Cranes and cold storage on the Delaware burn serious electricity. The plug-and-play future at Packer Avenue moves one berth at a time. What is actually energized, in plain terms.
J-044SEPT 17
2026

Policy
How to read a PUC filing without losing your afternoon

Tariffs, riders, base rate cases: a field guide to following PECO and PGW paperwork at the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, written in plain language.
J-043SEPT 15
2026

Buildings
Heat pumps on the block: what South Philly owners keep asking

Panel upgrades, rowhouse wiring, and the radiator that outlived three owners. The practical questions from the stoop, answered in plain language.

Where Things Stand

Checked each morning against public records: what is generating, what is in line, and what the season demands.

PGW / HEATThe city-owned Gas Works is studying routes off gas: its 2021 business diversification study, prepared with the consulting firm ICF, examined decarbonized gas blends, thermal networks, and hybrid electrification. Council hearings on the utility's future have continued through this administration.
PECO / GRIDPECO remains a distribution company inside the PJM market. Its territory's load is tilting toward data centers and electrified buildings, and every infrastructure filing now assumes more electric heat, not less.
SOLAR / ROOFSPennsylvania's Act 15 of 2023 finally enabled community solar, with program rules from the PUC following. Philly's own Solarize Philly and the Philadelphia Energy Authority keep chipping away at permitting and financing friction on residential roofs.
TRANSIT / SEPTASEPTA buys renewable power for operations and has piloted wayside storage to capture energy from braking trains. A transit agency as an energy player: underreported, and real.

Figures here are rounded and stated conservatively. When a number is not in a primary document, the story says so. Stylized charts are labeled as such.

Shop-drawing figure showing a slate-blue daily load curve and a safety-orange solar bell curve crossing over a diagonally raked field, with an amber sun disc and hour ticks — **FIG. 1.** What a typical day looks like on the local grid: electricity demand stays high from morning through evening, while solar output rises and sets with the sun. This diagram shows the pattern, not real measurements.

Field Briefs

Two standing briefs, kept short. The full stories are in the list above.

Port

On the river, the cranes are switching jobs

Diesel gantries, electric cold storage, and the long plug-in at the marine terminals. The port's electrification is incremental, expensive, and hard to unsee once you know where to look.

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Rowhouses

The block turns over one quiet roof at a time

Flat roofs, party walls, and a parapet full of south-facing sun. Why the rowhouse block is harder than a warehouse roof, and why it matters more to the city's arithmetic.

Browse all stories →

How We Work

The rules we work by, posted so readers can hold us to them.

About this publication

Renewable Energy Philadelphia is a new daily publication covering clean and renewable energy in Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley: the PJM grid, PECO and PGW filings, warehouse and rowhouse solar, port and industrial electrification, SEPTA's energy work, and the local permitting and incentive machinery that decides what actually gets built.

We are not an advocacy group and not a trade outlet. A utility filing is news here. So is a warehouse owner's array, done properly.

Our rules

Primary documents first: PUC filings, PJM queues, city council hearings, program pages, project permits.
Numbers are rounded and hedged unless they sit in a primary source. When we are estimating, we say so.
Illustrative figures are labeled as such, every time. If a chart shows a pattern rather than real data, the caption says so.
No invented quotes, no anonymous officials who do not exist, no press releases passed off as reporting.
Corrections run at the top of the story, dated, with the original text preserved.

Send documents, data, or corrections to tips@renewableenergyphiladelphia.com.

Three-panel illustration repeating one rowhouse block with rooftop solar panels in slate blue, then safety orange, then dark bench with amber panels — **FIGURE B.** The same rowhouse block, three ways: the flat roofs and party walls that decide how fast solar spreads in Philadelphia.