Without a doubt, the immense complexity of the situation surrounding the construction of pipelines for incremental capacity in New England creates many uncertainties. Facing both legal and political challenges, pipeline projects face an uphill battle to come into operation. In order to alleviate reliability and price concerns, something must be done. The merits of an […]
Good Afternoon Chairman Downing, Chairman Golden, members of the Committee. My name is Cynthia Arcate. I am the President and CEO of PowerOptions. Thank you for the opportunity to provide you with my views on the state of energy in the Commonwealth. I have about 30 years of experience in the energy industry, in both […]
Right now, it seems like Massachusetts remains on the slow boat to natural gas pipeline expansion, which is impacting prices for customers and reliability for power generators. The region needs an expedient solution to avoid an energy crisis which may only have been tempered by the recent drop in oil prices that made LNG more […]
In a recent blog, Christophe Courchesne of the Conservation Law Foundation describes the recent drop in wholesale power prices as reason why the region does not need expansion of natural gas pipelines. The final sentence of his article thoughtfully begins, “In a market that can turn on a dime.” And that is really what is […]
The latest development in the never-ending debate on whether and how to increase natural gas capacity into New England is a low demand analysis from the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER). This analysis was conducted at the direction of then-Governor Deval Patrick to determine whether new natural gas pipeline infrastructure is needed in the […]
Last Thursday afternoon, an event occurred on the New England power lines (called “ties”) from Canada which should give any proponent of buying large amounts of power from Canada pause. It turns out that at the same moment an executive from Northeast Utilities was speaking at the ISO-NE Consumer Liaison Group meeting that day about […]
