Thread by @jglarusso

1. Last Friday & Saturday @CommonWealthMag published dueling opinion pieces on natural gas infrastructure—one by BU Prof. @nathanpboston, and the other by Marcy Reed, President of @nationalgridus here in MA.

The two pieces could not have been more starkly different.

#mapoli

2. Prof. Phillips summed up what he accomplished and failed to accomplish during his recent two-week(!) hunger strike to compel @MassGovernor and @MassDEP to satisfy the Commonwealth’s obligation to enforce environmental & safety standards at...

bit.ly/2HrcUTS

3. ...the construction site of the @Enbridge natural gas compressor station in Weymouth.

Marcy Reed, OTOH, wrote about the 1 in 5(!) NGrid MA customers who qualify for MA’s Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). Those 1 in 5, Reed wrote, ...

bit.ly/3bJnZh6

4. ... “must choose between paying their energy bills and buying food...their hunger isn’t voluntary.”

Reed contrasted the forced hunger of the 1 in 5 against Prof. Phillips’ hunger-as-protest. Unlike the 1 in 5, she pointed out, Phillips “chose not to eat.” Phillips’ zeal, ...

5. ... she suggested (and his privilege, she implied), had made him blind to the energy burden (the higher percentage of household income spent on energy) shouldered by his less affluent neighbors, and made him blind to its obvious solution: the expansion of the natural gas ...

6. ... distribution and transmission pipeline system that he opposes.

Reed’s premise is based on the fact that 25% of MA residents still heat with fuel oil. According to Reed, when those customers convert to gas they “realize an average annual cost savings of $1,000.”

7. That’s a compelling number.

And heating with electricity? Again according to Reed, heating with gas “is about half the cost of heat produced with electricity.”

So... Where to begin?

Perhaps by pointing out that the price of natural gas is currently the lowest it's...

8. …been since 2016, and that this February’s gas prices have been the lowest February prices in 20 years.

Why? Because the growth in gas supply has outstripped gas demand, and because last month was the fifth-warmest January in …

bit.ly/2OXNa5G

9 … @NOAA’s 126-year climate record.


If gas is at its lowest price in years, & 1 in 5 NGrid MA energy customers *still* qualify for LIHEAP, how will the construction of more gas transmission and distribution pipelines reduce the need for LIHEAP?

10. The answer, unfortunately, is that it can’t and it won’t.

There’s a simple reason that hard fact is true. Take a look at the sample gas bill NGrid provides on its website.

As you can see, Mr. Smith’s bill (circa 2016 when gas prices were last as...

ngrid.com/39HuJtY

11. …low as they are now) totals $50.20. The cost of the 32 therms he used was $8.91. The cost of delivering those 32 therms to 1010 Any St., however, was $41.29. And what is built into the cost of the Gas Delivery Charge? Why the cost of the gas distribution system, of course!

12. Gas utilities don’t make any money on the cost of the gas they deliver—they pass that cost on to customers without markup. But gas utilities do make money for their shareholders—lots of it—by building out the infrastructure needed to deliver the gas.

Build they must.

13. So this is what Marcy Reed is proposing—building out more pipelines to secure the blessings of natural gas for new customers, 1 in 5 of whom will have to rely on LIHEAP to pay a bill ~80% of which is a Gas Delivery Charge that has embedded in it the cost of, well, …

14. … securing for them the blessings of natural gas.

Aside -- Natural gas utilities are much better at building new pipelines than they are at maintaining the pipelines they already have. A Jan/2020 report commissioned by the MA Dept. of Public Utilities after the 9/13/18…

15. ...Merrimack Valley gas explosions found gas utilities across MA were underperforming in repairing leaks. And Marcy Reed’s utility? "The miles of mains with discovered leaks on the National Grid distribution system actually increased [2013-2018].” bit.ly/39OI6bZ

16. (Here’s a link to the full, final report—bit.ly/37HowNp—courtesy @MarthaCreedon)

So, the obvious question: why should a gas utility that can’t manage to keep pace with needed repairs to its existing infrastructure be allowed to expand its service even further?

17. I can’t resist pointing out that the Nathan Phillips who was the focus of Marcy Reed’s response is the very same Nathan Phillips who has been assiduously mapping gas leaks here in Boston. bit.ly/2SWxSiL

18. And I also can’t resist pointing out that that Nathan Phillips is the very same Nathan Phillips who took it upon himself to raise $ to purchase induction cook pots for families in the Merrimack Valley after the Sep 2018 gas explosions, so that they wouldn’t go … hungry.

https://twitter.com/nathanpboston/status/1055830382262870018

19. But, where was I? Right! The blessings of natural gas.

Marcy Reed is right. It costs less to heat a home with natural gas than it does with oil. But does it cost less to heat a home with natural gas than it does with electricity?

Well …

20. If Marcy Reed was comparing the cost of heating a home with gas rather than *electric resistance heating* then she was right again. The latter is more expensive. But what about electric air source heat pumps? A June 2018 @SynapseEnergy study found that converting a home…

21. …heated with oil to an air source heat pump system would save $255 annually, whereas converting from oil to natural gas would save $516 annually. The Synapse study found, however, that if heat pumps replace window AC or central AC units for cooling, their savings …

22. … over oil increase from $275 to $455—an amount approaching parity with oil to natural gas conversions. bit.ly/2P7ss3r And of course, taking into account the enormous expense of building out the natural gas distribution system, the cost of adding just one more …

23. … gas customer dwarfs the cost of installing a stand-alone air source heat pump system. An air source heat pump will also produce less GHG emissions on its first day compared to a natural gas furnace, and unlike the natural gas furnace, its associated GHG emissions will ...

24. … continue to decline as the electric grid becomes cleaner over time.

But wait! There’s renewable natural gas (RNG) you say? Unfortunately there isn’t enough RNG to make a meaningful reduction to gas emissions overall. bit.ly/2V61PzO

25. One risk of heating with electric heat pumps is that electricity here in New England is most expensive in winter, during heating season. But the recent surge in municipal aggregations here in MA should mitigate that seasonal risk. The aggregations purchase longer-term …

26. … contracts for power, and afford their customers greater, non-seasonal price stability. When Boston completes its currently pending aggregation, ~60% of MA electricity customers will have access to an aggregation.

27. I don’t envy anyone in charge of a gas utility. They’re selling a commodity that we can no longer afford to use if we’re going to meet our GHG reduction goals—they’re in the midst of losing their social license to operate. And now we can just as easily afford technologies …

28 … to heat and cool our homes that will help us to reach those GHG targets.

Gas utilities really only have one chance for long-term survival: by beginning to deliver heating and cooling—services—rather than a commodity. Gas customers don’t want to purchase gas per se, …

29. … they want to purchase warmth in winter and cool comfort in summer. As @HEET_MA has proposed, we shouldn’t spend the anticipated $9B it would take to repair the Commonwealth’s leaking gas pipelines, rather we should begin replacing the gas distribution system with …

30. …street-scale geothermal systems. If gas utilities won’t take that task on then there is really only one course of action remaining if we’re going to meet our mandated GHG reduction targets: a gradual decommissioning of the gas distribution system,…

31. … with consistent public support over time for the dwindling system’s remaining gas customers.

Gas is dead. It has no future. Policymakers should plan accordingly for an orderly, equitable transition.

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