I laud the hardy citizens of New England as they confront significantly higher energy prices in facing the coldest winter in a couple of decades there. As described by William Murray at RealClearEnergy, that’s a consequence of their determination to oppose climate change:
Both prices and demand for domestic natural gas have surged as people have started plugging in their space heaters. Gas consumption set a new record for daily use on January 1, surpassing the previous record set in January 2014 in the midst of the “Polar Vortex.†Energy prices in most of the country increased 20–30 percent to account for the strong demand before quickly returning to previous levels. But in parts of New England prices spiked more than 400 percent.
Why? New England — including Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island — is the only part of the country that has constrained supplies of natural gas. This constraint is largely self-induced by “above-ground†political issues. Local and state opposition have blocked a number of natural gas pipelines in recent years, with the result that the region hasn’t benefited from the gas production growth in the Marcellus shale formation in nearby Pennsylvania
This means that the 50,000 miles of U.S. natural gas pipelines built during the past decade largely skipped New England, leaving the region with the highest electricity prices in the United States. A study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found residents in the Northeast pay 44 percent more than the national average for electricity and 29 percent more for natural gas. Industrial users of electricity pay 60 percent more than the national average, according to the Chamber.
I hope their sacrifices aren’t for naught which they may be if the natural gas is replaced by burning wood pellets grown in a non-sustainable manner which is what the Germans did.
