1. Interesting @EversourceCorp take. Their subsidiaries supply electricity *and* gas in Cambridge, so you’d think that if they were selling fewer therms but more kWhs they’d be indifferent about a gas ban. But it’s evident that Eversource Electric & ...
bit.ly/2Sl1TtV
bit.ly/2Sl1TtV
2. ... Eversource Natural Gas are two different business units, and that their corporate parent perceives a genuine threat to the latter. The answer?
Pose as alarmed emissions hawks!
To paraphrase their spox, “If you use electricity to heat your individual homes more ...
Pose as alarmed emissions hawks!
To paraphrase their spox, “If you use electricity to heat your individual homes more ...
3. ... natural gas will have to be burned in power plants to make more electricity! Gah!” Tellingly, Eversource was not concerned about increasing the region’s electric load when it rolled out its “Make-Ready” EV charging station program...
4. You didn’t hear “If you use electricity to power your vehicles more natural gas will have to be burned in power plants to make more electricity! Gah!” No, Eversource is not in the ⛽️ business so in that case they’re only too happy to deliver more of the product ...
5. ... they do sell (kWs), and to earn a tidy guaranteed 10% return on equity for the $45M of conduit they’ll install under their EV Make-Ready program.
Eversource’s spox also said a ban on gas hookups in new buildings would drive up customers’ already high electric bills.
Eversource’s spox also said a ban on gas hookups in new buildings would drive up customers’ already high electric bills.
6. Well, that doesn’t necessarily follow if the new buildings are built tight, and are more efficient in accordance with rigorous building codes. Moreover, homeowners would have no natural gas bill to pay.
Finally, the spox also suggested that the prices of new homes ...
Finally, the spox also suggested that the prices of new homes ...
7. ... and commercial buildings would increase. Someone needs to explain this one to me: my parents built a three-bedroom all-electric house in 1972 for less than $25,000. Affordable all-electric homes have been built for decades, no? And today’s all-electric homes ...
8. ... use that resource much more efficiently than my parents’ c. 1972 resistance-heated home.
If Eversource’s spox had been truly candid this is what she would have said:
“Look, all of that stuff I said just then, that was intended to turn you against one another...
If Eversource’s spox had been truly candid this is what she would have said:
“Look, all of that stuff I said just then, that was intended to turn you against one another...
9. ... Just then I was trying to persuade some of you that the rest of you are effete green snobs who are advocating an ineffectual environmental policy that will only raise prices on the hard-working non-effete among you. Basically, that the wealthier in your community ...
10. ... were attempting, in effect, to steal from their poorer neighbors not for any good purpose, but simply to make themselves feel smugly self-righteous.”
“Well, I was telling the truth when I said Eversource is concerned about these gas bans. We’re concerned because ...
“Well, I was telling the truth when I said Eversource is concerned about these gas bans. We’re concerned because ...
11. ... our entire argument for building out the gas distribution system here in New England is based on meeting demand. I mean, how many times have you heard us say with alarm ‘The system is constrained’ exclamation mark? So we need demand to ...
12. ... build stuff—including pipelines—that we can add to our rate base, and have you pay us a guaranteed rate of return for it all via your gas bill. If all of a sudden you begin questioning the wisdom of us building out our system to deliver more and more gas ...
13. ... at a time when we know we should be decreasing rather than increasing carbon emissions then—Pffffffft!—there goes our business model! That makes for unhappy shareholders who might be stuck paying for the cost of the stuff we built to meet ...
14. ... future demand that never materialized. Stuff that may become—the horror!—‘stranded assets.’ And, good grief, if you also all begin defecting off of gas one-by-one in the name of ‘electrify everything’? Well, that’s the beginning ...
15. ... of the end—a death spiral. Here, I brought the list of Eversource Energy’s top 10 shareholders. Together they own 42.9% of the company. I’m here tonight to represent Eversource Energy’s regulated gas utility. Thank you.”
cnn.it/2sS1DrF
cnn.it/2sS1DrF
16. If Eversource says that it is concerned about the effect bans on nature gas hookups will have, we should take them at their word—not for the reasons they state, but for the reasons they fail to state explicitly—then we must do our utmost to proliferate them.
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