I STRENUOUSLY DISAGREE with the recent opinion piece by Ian Bowles in which he argues that, “with rapid departure of all of the remaining coal and nuclear power plants in Massachusetts, we need to bring more natural gas to our state.” Isn’t that a multibillion-dollar investment in obsolete technology?
Building new pipeline infrastructure only takes us further down the fossil fuel road when we need to move to the post-fossil fuel age. With finite economic and environmental resources, we must practice triage and build infrastructure that will support a healthy economy and environment for our children. Resources saved by not building pipelines can go towards the other items listed in the opinion piece: maximizing energy efficiency; increasing solar and wind power; and searching for ways, old and new, to reduce Massachusetts’ carbon footprint.
CommonWealth has published several articles making the case against new gas pipelines. One article, written by officials from the Acadia Center in March, argued that building new pipelines would break the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative caps and also called for change in the way we incentivize energy production and dissemination.
Finally, let’s improve efficiency by fixing the leaks from our existing pipes! This would cut waste that consumers pay for and improve the air quality of our cities and towns. (Often neighborhoods with the most gas leaks are also the poorest). Fixing leaks, which account for as much as 10 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions, would put us on our way to reaching our emissions cap.
Let’s fix the pipes we have! It is a WIN (for efficiency), WIN (for health), WIN (for environmental justice), WIN (for climate)!
Elizabeth Dowey is a resident of Medford.
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Policymakers, pushing renewable energy (wind and solar), are forcing the early retirement of coal power plants like the Brayton Point Power plant on Somerset, to avoid carbon emissions. The same policy is also forcing the early retirement of nuclear power plants, like pilgrim in Plymouth, which negates net carbon avoidance from coal. We are told that the baseload power from coal and nuclear will be replaced by wind farms and solar panels. The problem is that wind and solar are just the opposite of firm baseload power from coal and nuclear. Wind and solar are variable and unpredictable that can only function with the addition of highly flexible natural gas power on the grid.
We can see the results down here on the Cape Cod canal. We have 4 giant wind turbines and a solar farm south of the canal and 4 more giant wind turbines north of the canal adjacent to route 25. After years of promises that the dirty fossil fuel power plant on the Cape Cod Canal will be forced to close by the push to renewables, we learn that the plant has received approval to expand their natural gas power capacity by 330 MW, some 10 times the power of local wind and solar.
This is why now, we do not have enough gas for the winter. Tell the governor to wake up. Wind and solar are not going to save the planet from Global Warming.
One must ask about this contributor’s qualifications. Any argument that centers around an unfounded and subjective assertion (“obsolete technology”) should raise questions. I see on these pages that the not-for-profit operator of the New England grid is worried about supply shortages in the absence of new gas transmission capacity. Mr. Bowles is a well-regarded expert in energy policy. Is there any reason why I should weight Ms. Downey’s opinion over theirs?
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