Big thanks to AG Healey for continuing to oppose unnecessary and harmful fossil fuel infrastructure. The Baker administration wants to stick us with the cost of something we don’t need — in fact, which we strenuously need to avoid having: the Spectra pipeline project. It’s a tax!
The AG’s office argues that […] this unprecedented requirement for electric ratepayers to shoulder pipeline construction costs [is] unnecessary. The plan, her office argues, would expose ratepayers to risks that the Legislature sought to avoid by restructuring the electric industry in the late 1990s.
Healey has decided to play the role of ratepayer advocate, one of the attorney general’s responsibilities.
…
“This issue is at the core of whether New England continues to decarbonize its energy platform or lock into fossil fuels for another generation,” said Bradley Campbell, Conservation Law Foundation’s president. “The last thing the government should be doing is providing a subsidy to natural gas pipelines, especially when that subsidy is against the interests of families and businesses paying their electricity bills.”
Exactly. And this is why you need a vision, not just a managerial bean-counting attitude from the Governor’s office. “Gas is expensive — Need MOAR gas” is the kind of very-much-in-the-box thinking we’ve come to expect from today’s business minds. Our gas leaks are everywhere. Gas is not cleaner than coal. And the infrastructure that we build now, based on today’s volatile per-unit asset prices, will be around for a generation. It locks in a long-term, epochal and ultimately undesirable response to a short-term, temporary and mitigable problem. It’s the energy equivalent of the Central Artery: Gets the job done, sure, but only by carving a swath through better alternatives, and leaves a gigantic white elephant behind — physically, economically, and environmentally.
No. We should be focused on using and wasting less gas — which may well have a market effect. And if we’re building infrastructure at public expense that will last a generation, it should only be the infrastructure of the zero-carbon future.
Thanks to AG Healey for getting it, and for continuing to fight for the future.
Mullaley540 says
Let’s show Charlie Baker that there’s a political cost to his outrageous $8 Billion pipeline tax. Make sure his ally, State Senate candidate O’Connor loses Tuesday’s (May 10th) special election.
If you live in Weymouth, Hingham, Hull, Cohasset, Scituate, Marshfield or Duxbury, be sure to vote Tuesday, May 10th, FOR the progressive candidate that is truly against both the dangerous Fore River Compressor Station and the Spectra Energy pipeline, Joan Meschino!
BTW, the Spectra Energy pipeline is for transporting fracked gas from Pennsylvania through Massachusetts to Nova Scotia where it will be shipped to Europe. Charlie Baker thinks Massachusetts consumers should pay $8 Billion for this pipeline through monthly surcharges on our electric and gas bills.
Note that Baker’s ally O’Connor is taking GOP PAC money, and Spectra Energy is a major GOP donor. In fact on this week’s earnings call, Spectra Energy told investors that they have major political connections in Massachusetts that they think will overcome local opposition.
gmoke says
Any new natural gas (methane) infrastructure should be designed with methane capture from manure (animal and human) and natural decomposition in mind. Methane is not a bridge fuel because it won’t go away. It is part of the natural digestive and decomposition process and should always be taken into consideration.
We need to start thinking about methane management within a regime of environmental quality control that views zero emissions as an approachable goal, the way that Total Quality Management uses zero defects on a production line as an approachable goal.
And that zero emissions idea goes for everything, not just methane.
scott12mass says
a large beef producer is working on “backpacks” which the cows wear to capture the methane and then they process it. Hilarious pictures but it makes economic sense when it’s scaled up. win/win
Trickle up says
20 years ago the Legislature radically restructured the utility industry specifically to shift the risk of large capital investment from ratepayers to energy entrepreneurs.
(Don’t feel sad for the utilities, they got a bundle of money from us that they arguably did not deserve.)
With this move the DPU is seeking to overturn that. The AG rightly objects.
This funding mechanism, often know as “construction work in progress” charges, enabled some truly awful boondoggles until it was outlawed around here. It still does enable boondoggles where it is allowed in the deep south.
And it is historically, though not currently, extremely unpopular; CWIP upturned politics in New Hampshire in the late 1970s and unseated Governor Mel Thomson, fair hared conservative nutcase favorite of the Union Leader at the height of its powers.