Opinion

Extending delivery of natural gas is sound environmental policy

America’s amazing natural gas boom of the past decade, produced largely by innovative hydraulic fracturing techniques — known colloquially as “fracking” — could not have come at a better time. It is urgent that the United States, like the rest of the world, reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Yet at the same time, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, while expanding, are not yet efficient and reliable enough to supply adequate power to an industrialized and prosperous country of 330 million.

Natural gas, which pollutes the atmosphere far less than burning coal or oil, is widely regarded as a “bridge fuel” that can take us from an era of dirtier fossil fuels to a future of cleaner power, still being invented and refined. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, for example, one of the richest people in the world, is backing what his company TerraPower calls “a more affordable, secure and environmentally friendly form of nuclear energy.” Such abundant energy would produce no greenhouse gases (though the public remains skeptical and fearful of nuclear).

Thus, the fact that the United States is now the world’s largest producer of natural gas, surpassing Russia about a decade ago, is astonishingly good news for our country, as it has driven natural gas prices to record lows.

It is unfortunate, though, that many residents of New England have been left out of the boom that much of the rest of the country is enjoying.

Consider a recent announcement from Holyoke Gas & Electric and Middleborough Gas and Electric, in Western Massachusetts. Since January, the two companies have enforced a moratorium on new residential natural gas hookups in several towns, including Holyoke and Southampton. Their announcement was hardly unprecedented: “The HG&E moratorium is not the first in western Massachusetts. Berkshire Gas has had a new hookup moratorium in eight Franklin and Hampshire County towns for about four years and Columbia Gas has had a moratorium on new natural gas service in Northampton and Easthampton since 2014,” reported the Boston Herald.

The reason for the moratoria is simple: New England’s pipeline infrastructure is woefully inadequate, judged by experts to be the nation’s worst. (They’re a big reason that New Englanders pay far more for energy than other Americans.) So-called environmental activists and the politicians they control have repeatedly stymied attempts to build new pipelines.

“While inexpensive natural gas has never been more plentiful in the United States, there is insufficient pipeline capacity in our region to deliver additional load,” said Holyoke Gas & Electric. “Recent proposals that would increase natural gas capacity in the region have been met with opposition, and the current pipeline constraints are causing significant adverse environmental and economic impacts on the region’s ratepayers.”

In short, we are letting perfection become the enemy of the good. While natural gas is indeed a fossil fuel, it pollutes much less than coal and oil. Blocking new pipelines accomplishes little but raise energy prices. And, because it prevents people from using natural gas, it also increases emissions — a truly perverse outcome.

Moreover, new pipelines can be constructed at the same time that states take other actions to reduce the production of greenhouse gases. Natural gas is a complement to, and not an enemy of, sound environmental planning.

Reprinted from the Providence Journal, April 3.

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