Even without accidental site leaks, the infrastructure itself leaks terribly. Residential fossil gas systems are constantly venting tiny amounts of methane from throughout the system, with occasional major issues that can go days or weeks without notice until a sniffer van or something like it catches it. This happened at my house just recently – my gas was fully capped off the week I moved in, but a guy showed up now several years later from the utility and said he was there for a detected leak and he had to remove the meter and re-cap everything. The whole time trying to convince me that gas stoves are better than my undeniably-superior induction one.

For all I know it was venting at a decent clip this whole time. Nothing I could really do about it. It’s not like I was checking the meter what with my no service, and as far as the guy could tell the leak was from before the meter anyway.

And it’ll get worse as the systems are used less. A smaller subscriber base means these companies will inevitably cut repair and maintenance budgets, leading to more leaks. More methane. The only safe and sensible thing to to have public takeovers on them and then immediately start working to decommission.