Columbia Gas of Ohio CHOICE Program: SCO vs. Fixed-Rate Explained

If you've watched your Columbia Gas of Ohio bill swing sharply from one winter month to the next, the reason traces back to how the default gas supply rate is calculated — and understanding it is the key to deciding whether locking in a fixed price makes sense for your household.

What the Standard Choice Offer (SCO) Actually Is

Most Columbia Gas customers are automatically enrolled in the Standard Choice Offer (SCO), the utility's default natural gas supply rate. The SCO price is calculated monthly using a simple formula: the NYMEX month-end natural gas settlement price, plus a Retail Price Adjustment set annually through a PUCO-supervised auction. For June 2026, that worked out to a settlement price of $3.04/Mcf plus a Retail Price Adjustment of $2.25/Mcf, for a combined SCO rate of $5.29/Mcf (billed to customers as $0.529/Ccf).

Because the settlement price half of that formula resets every month based on the NYMEX market, your SCO rate moves with wholesale gas prices in real time. The Retail Price Adjustment portion is more stable — it's locked in for a full year, from April through March, based on the results of each January's PUCO auction — but the market-price half keeps the total number in motion all winter long.

Why This Setup Amplifies Winter Bill Swings

Natural gas demand — and pricing — both spike hard in winter, exactly when heating usage is highest. That means the SCO's monthly market-price component tends to be at its highest right when your household is burning the most gas, compounding the effect on your bill rather than offsetting it. The Retail Price Adjustment has shown real year-to-year volatility too: it nearly doubled heading into the 2025-2026 delivery year before dropping again for the 2026-2027 auction cycle — a reminder that the "default" rate isn't a stable number you can plan around from one winter to the next.

It's worth knowing that Columbia Gas doesn't profit from any of this. By law, the utility is prohibited from marking up the SCO price — gas costs are passed through to customers exactly as incurred, and even the SCO suppliers selected through the PUCO auction are required to charge that same passed-through rate to every SCO customer.

The CHOICE Alternative: Locking In a Fixed MCF Price

This is where Ohio's CHOICE program comes in. Because Ohio deregulated its natural gas market, Columbia Gas customers aren't required to stay on the SCO. Certified CHOICE marketers can offer fixed-rate contracts — a set price per Mcf that holds steady for the length of your agreement, regardless of what NYMEX prices or the next PUCO auction do. For a household trying to budget through a Northeast Ohio winter, that predictability is the entire point: your heating bill stops being a monthly guessing game tied to a market you have no control over.

The tradeoff works the same way it does in any deregulated commodity market — a fixed CHOICE rate protects you from spikes, but it also means you won't automatically benefit if wholesale gas prices happen to drop mid-contract the way they did heading into the 2026-2027 auction cycle.

Comparing SCO Against CHOICE Offers

Columbia Gas provides an official comparison — the Apples to Apples chart maintained through PUCO — showing current CHOICE marketer offers side by side with the SCO rate, so customers can see in real terms whether a fixed offer beats the current default before switching.

The best time to make that comparison is before winter heating season ramps up, while you still have the option to lock in a rate rather than riding out a season of monthly SCO swings. Upload a recent Columbia Gas bill to Maya AI, and it'll identify your current SCO rate and usage pattern, then check it against available fixed-rate CHOICE offers — so you know with real numbers whether locking in ahead of winter would protect your budget.

Check your Columbia Gas rate with Maya AI →