It is no longer a secret. Instead of letting consumers and markets drive energy decisions, environmental activists and special interests did. The byproduct of policymakers listening to moonbats is, ironically, going to be worse for the environment.
Related: Working Hard to Make Sure We All Freeze to Death
“Natural gas shortages and reliability concerns in New England are neither short-term, nor unanticipated…. ISO-New England and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have for many months called attention to the very real reliability issues likely to face the region in the coming winter months due to insufficient supply of natural gas.”
“New England power plants generated an estimated 4.18 million metric tons of CO2 in January 2022, up from 2.77 million metric tons in January 2021, with the region’s heavier reliance on oil accounting for most of the difference.” (INGAA, below)
The fracking boom made natural gas more affordable and made us a world leader in carbon emission reductions over the past decade.
LNG is an abundant domestic American resource that’s efficient, reliable, and effective. We have so much that under President Trump, we tried to break Russia’s hold on Europe. That ended when Uncle Joe stumbled into the Oval Office, but New England was in trouble long before that.
The expert response to this boon in these parts was to make it less available, which came with a price.
Trying to turn natural gas into unobtanium has jacked up reliance on dirtier fuels that emit more of that stuff they tell us we need less of, or we will boil in our skivvies. In other words, the Green guardians of the Northeast Galaxy f-d up you, themselves, and the environment.
Related: Without Fossil Fuels, Millions of Americans Could Freeze to Death
They sold everyone a lemon, and while we’ve got laws for used cars, there’s no protection clause for selling energy solutions that will never be able to deliver as advertised.
New England will need natural gas to meet its power needs both this winter and into the foreseeable future…. Unfortunately, there is insufficient infrastructure connecting New England to domestic natural gas supplies and recent attempts to expand existing infrastructure at the request of local utilities and other energy users have been thwarted by misguided policies and vocal opponents to new infrastructure development.
And no, elections are no protection; look at the 2022 midterms. State Government in New Hampshire is closer to the freeze caucus after November 8th than it was on November 7th. So perhaps I need to take back my opening claim that it’s no secret. And that’s a problem. If we have service disruptions in January and February – not because of storms but due to shortages – people will wonder why.
New England’s reliance on imported LNG is not sustainable, and the negative consequences of overreliance on imported LNG can be avoided with additional natural gas pipeline infrastructure. This solution is especially compelling considering the region’s proximity to the Marcellus shale production area, one of the most prolific natural gas supply basins in the world.
Will anyone tell the truth? That poor decision-making motivated by short-sighted partisan activists peddling a false armageddon scenario is why the lights or the heat don’t work?
And how sad it is that if they’d just let us build the pipelines, we’d not only have electricity and heat but also be reducing “emissions™.”
Instead, we’ll be making more of them.
The smartest people who know better, my ass.
