There has been much hand-wringing and crystal ball reading in the days since Kinder Morgan announced its plans to cancel their Northeast Direct natural gas pipeline project. As usual, some of the analysis is spot on but most paint too broad a brush in identifying winners and losers, especially as it relates to consumers. One […]
Much angst has been expressed by the Baker Administration, legislators and others about the need to replace so-called “base load” electricity generation as a result of the shutdown of several aging power plants in Massachusetts, most notably the Pilgrim nuclear plant. The concept of base load generation is that there is an underlying need for […]
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 […]
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 […]
As previously discussed in this column, the New England electricity system operator, ISO-NE, encountered difficulties last winter in meeting electricity demand when natural gas supplies, the primary fuel source of electricity generation in the region, were constrained during high heating demand. After many months of wrangling, a plan – the Winter Reliability Program – was […]
