The Boston Globe’s editorial page has been ranting (actually ranting) about the need for a new pipeline for some months now. This is doubtless under the influence of regional electrical grid ISO-NE’s Gordon van Welie, and follows a January report from ISO-NE that suggested that rolling blackouts could be common by 2024-2025 without more natural gas.
But it’s all about the assumptions. And a new report by energy experts at Synapse on behalf of the Conservation Law Foundation calls those into question. Their scenarios, which take into account continued improvements in efficiency and renewables as mandated by law, indicate that no new pipelines should be necessary.
Taken as a whole, the ISO scenarios and the stakeholder scenarios show a wide range of potential conditions during an extreme New England winter. The model results vary a great deal depending on the assumptions used in each scenario. When the ISO’s arbitrary assumptions are replaced with current trends and existing state resource commitments, grid operations during an extreme winter are more manageable and no rolling blackouts occur.
…
- For its Reference case, the ISO used unreasonable assumptions regarding three of the five fuel variables in its model:
- For the renewable variable, the ISO did not give full credit to the renewable portfolio standards that have been adopted by all six New England states;
- For the electricity imports variable, the ISO gave no credit for the Massachusetts legislation requiring 1,000 MW of clean energy;
- For the LNG variable, the ISO chose a low value for daily contributions of LNG, when current LNG infrastructure can provide 50-100 percent higher amounts.
It seems that the ISO report, in general, erred on an unjustifiably pessimistic side with regard to the growth in renewables, and their ability to provide security to the grid. Underestimating renewables growth is unfortunately pretty common, and in policy it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyone with any common sense can see that we haven’t maxed out on efficiency yet. Imagine if we spent the $3.6-$7 Billion proposed for pipeline building on energy efficiency! Yes, Massachusetts leads the country, but that’s an incredibly low bar. And if New Hampshire is concerned about fuel security, it could surely do more for efficiency: currently it is ranked 21st. Improvement would help the entire grid.
In any event, it’s good to have actual numbers and scenarios in front of us. The fact that the Globe has omitted those from its editorials shows a lot, and it’s not good for them.
Trickle up says
Did you see their sneering, convoluted editorial about how stupid the critics of transmission for Canadian mega-hydro are?
The Globe has never met a large energy project it did not like. That’s all there is to it.
gmoke says
Every time the pipeline issue comes up I will point out that we need a system of methane management within a zero emissions regime, where zero emissions is an approachable goal as zero defects is on a production line in Total Quality Management systems; that methane is NOT a bridge fuel but is a constant in many biological processes, including our own guts; that we need to transition from fossil methane, such as fracking, to biological methane, capture said methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and use it for productive purposes.
If we are to design a new natural gas or methane infrastructure we should be thinking about that transition from fossil to biological methane and plan accordingly. However, I suspect that there are very few who are even remotely interested in that perspective.
Won’t keep me from putting it out there though.
SomervilleTom says
The proponents of building the pipeline mostly care about building the pipeline itself — they demonstrate no interest in what the pipeline will carry or the consequences of delivering that product.
This is about exploiting useless infrastructure construction to enrich the pipeline builders with public funds. The irony is that the same political sector that clamors for such rubbish loudly strives to slash “giveaways” to immigrants, blacks, and “welfare queens” (so that these corporate giveaways can be accomplished without raising taxes).
It’s a variant on the classic “asphalt racket” — corrupt contractors partner with corrupt government officials to use government funds to dig up a perfectly serviceable street, patch it with nice new asphalt, roll it out, and move on to the next “repair” site. It’s a “victimless” crime, don’t you see. Nobody is bleeding on the sidewalk, so there’s no “victim”.
Our government, together with ethically bankrupt publications like the Boston Globe, is joining the electoric in the “post truth” era. Since our electorate has demonstrated that voters don’t care one iota about facts, truth, or rationality (and can’t or won’t pay attention even if when the truth is offered), some of our agile government leaders have figured out how to seize the opportunity to make more money for themselves and their cronies.
When we are unwilling to call ignorant, racist, misogynist, and xenophobic voters “deplorable”, we get a government that promotes boondoggles like this.
Andrei Radulescu-Banu says
We have complained for years that oil and gas energy companies pay up their own studies – and now that the shoe is on the other foot, we’re treating the Conservation Law Foundation paid report as truly independent.
This illustrates why reforming governance in the energy space is so difficult. The energy space is highly regulated – nothing happens without government intervention. Some countries may have worked out efficient ways to run government-directed programs. Our country and our state have proved unable to do that. The free market is baked into our culture. We don’t know to do well government-directed market.
Yes, even free markets need government regulation – no argument there – but the regulation and direction of energy market have been extreme. The pendulum has swung too far in one direction, and risks destroying the market itself.
The state would do well to set clean energy targets, and set technology agnostic incentives to achieve them. The state has not done well in picking winners and losers in the energy technology markets. We are sliding backwards in terms of emissions because we’ve exhausted the saving coming from converting coal to natural gas – are about to lose the nuclear generation component completely – while being unable to build even simple things like long distance transmission lines, over local environmental opposition.
Trickle up says
Comparing the nonprofit Conservation Law Foundation with industry is a new low in false equivalence. The CLF has zero economic interest in putting its thumb on the scale. These two “sides” are utterly not the same.
Your pendulum comment is baffling considering that the pipeline proponents would shift the costs and risks of this project from the private to the public sector.
In short, they want government to abandon a source-agnostic market regime in favor of picking winners and losers. This is more regulation, not less.
Equally baffling are your remarks about clean energy targets. What does that have to do with fossil methane? Other than if we build a ratepayer-funded infrastructure for the latter, it will be harder to achieve the former.