Doomed to failure

Of course I signed up, since there's no down side.  However, I think it's doomed to failure.

I received the following offer from my natural gas company:

I imagine that on the coldest days of the winter, when my gas bill is dominated by high heating costs, that I will receive an email asking me to lower my gas consumption. They will then compare my gas consumption on that very cold day to the previous days to see if I was responsive. My guess is that my consumption will indicate that I'm not responsive, because cold weather. Nonetheless, since I might randomly be "responsive" due to a coincidental absence or just luck, I've signed up.  I'll get a whopping $2.50 per therm - I can't wait for the Benjamins to flow in at the end of the program.

This is either an ill-conceived social science experiment or a way for the gas company to claim that they are instituting programs to address predicted gas shortages. "Honest, we even implemented a novel program to conserve, but half of LA still froze to death because we ran out of gas."