Starting in 2024, a group of 10 Massachusetts communities kickstarted a first-of-a-kind experiment by pledging to go fossil fuel free. But moving off gas for new buildings doesn’t preclude the utilities from needing to spend tens of millions of dollars each year upgrading the existing infrastructure by replacing pipes. This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporters Hallie Claflin and Jordan Wolman discuss Wolman’s latest piece uncovering how gas companies have spent $100 million on natural gas infrastructure in nine of those 10 communities, roughly since they adopted their fossil fuel-free ordinances.
gas pipelines
Posted inEnergy
Massachusetts signals new gas customers may soon have to pay full hookup costs
Line extension allowances – which allow gas companies to charge the cost of hooking up new customers to existing ones – may be on their way out in Massachusetts.
Posted inEnergy
In enforcing new climate law, a dispute over the ‘obligation to serve’ natural gas customers
Massachusetts’ 2024 climate law aims to hasten the clean energy transition to meet the state’s climate goals, but a dispute over whether natural gas utility companies have an “obligation to serve” natural gas could stall the transition off of fossil-fuel infrastructure.
Posted inThe Back Story
More shots fired in pipeline wars
A group of natural gas pipeline opponents released a report on Thursday suggesting the operator of New England’s power grid used “unreasonable assumptions” when it concluded that rolling brownouts were […]
Posted inOpinion
The Boston climate trial that might have been
“THE IDEA THAT natural gas combats climate change is a sleight of hand,” writes Bill McKibben in a recent essay that pulls no punches. “No one wants to hear this,” […]
