PROPOSED REVISIONS TO EGD RATE ZONE ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY PROCEDURE AND POLICY

Introduction

1. The purpose of this evidence is to present the proposed revisions to the Company's current procedures and policies for determining the feasibility of the Company's system expansion and community expansion projects in the EGD rate zone. These procedures and policies are adopted to comply with the Guidelines for Assessing and Reporting on Natural Gas System Expansion in Ontario of the Ontario Energy Board ("Board"), reported under EBO 188 dated January 30, 1998.

2. This evidence includes an overview of the Company's Customer Connection Policy, Customer Contribution and Refund Policy, Method for Economic Feasibility Assessment, and Procedure for Capital Expenditure Approval. It has been expanded to include key elements of the Company policy under the Community Expansion framework as approved by the Board in EB-2016-0004 dated November 17, 2016 and refined for this Application. The new framework applies to all qualifying Community Expansion ("CE") Projects and Small Main Extension ("SME") and Customer Attachment Projects, as defined in the EGD rate zone Rate Handbook, Rider I.

Customer Connection Policy

3. The Company uses a portfolio approach to manage its system expansion activities and ensures that the required profitability standards are achieved at both the individual project and the portfolio level. Investment Portfolio and Rolling Project Portfolio are two Board-prescribed portfolio approaches and are discussed in paragraph 15 and 16 of this evidence.