Audrey Streb
Contributor
A coalition of Massachusetts climate activist groups sent a letter to government officials on March 18, in response to high utility costs concerning energy bills, though several renewable energy projects in the state have been driving up utility costs in the area for years.
Six environmental activist organizations, including Sierra Club Massachusetts and HEETlabs, sent the letter to Democratic Gov. Maura Healey and Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper. The letter included calls for provisions to lower energy bills.
Massachusetts has historically supported several expensive green energy projects that have been found to raise utility costs, including offshore wind farms like Vineyard Wind and the abandoned Cape Wind project. The Bay State plans to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a goal also championed by the Biden administration to the tune of $3 trillion.
“The sharp spikes in heating bills throughout the Commonwealth in January and February have been a financial shock and burden to customers,” the letter opens. “This spike has caused real pain and has been seized upon by climate deniers and opponents of clean energy.” (RELATED: One Of America’s Priciest Green Boondoggles May Be Going Offline After Sucking Up Subsidies And Incinerating Birds)
Letter on Gas Price Spikes to Maura Healey by Boston 25 Desk
“In 2023 alone, Massachusetts gas customers were charged $160 million to hook up additional buildings to the gas system, an average cost of nearly $10,000 per new customer for infrastructure that only serves those customers,” the letter continues.
The letter demands quicker action on lowering utility bills, outlining the first step as reducing infrastructure spending unless it is “financially appropriate.”
The document also claims that local “gas companies are charging ratepayers for their lobbying, advertising, and other expenses,” through a “loophole.” It also states that under the “reform the obligation to serve” request that “the 2024 climate law indicated that gas utilities can no longer be compelled to serve customers where alternatives to distributed gas are available.”
The letter included steps to lower energy bills, which prompted critics to point to Sierra Club’s expensive energy policy goals. Sierra Club advocates for 100% clean energy by 2050, according to its website. The Institute for Energy Research writes that it would cost trillions of dollars to enact this goal, citing studies from both Wood Mackenzie and American Action Forum, which estimate that this policy, shared with the Green New Deal, is unrealistic and expensive.
“It’s not fast enough to help with energy burden,” Vick Mohanka, the chapter director for Sierra Club’s Massachusetts chapter, told Boston 25 News. “It’s 100% on our bills and we’re paying more profits on this than other states,” she said.
The chapter dubs its state as “a leader” when it comes to “tackling climate change.” The group’s website reads that “Massachusetts has been rated #1 among all states for energy efficiency four years in a row,” and that the state was “one of the first states to pass aggressive climate change goals.”
Sierra Club Massachusetts did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
We need a multi-trillion dollar investment in the infrastructure necessary to weather and avert climate change, not a bipartisan bill with climate deniers. #NoClimateNoDeal. pic.twitter.com/nDEH2Xxchz
— Sierra Club (@SierraClub) June 23, 2021
“Each year, gas utilities spend more than $1 billion to replace aging methane gas pipelines in Massachusetts, costs that are increasingly passed onto consumers in the form of rising delivery rates, meaning some residents are stuck with a $400+ bill even before they use any gas,” a spokesperson for HEETlabs wrote to the DCNF. “Governor Healey and the Massachusetts State Legislature can lower utility costs consumers by reining in this utility spending.”
The spokesperson also pointed to research from Our World in Data, E & E News, Bloomberg, IRENA, Trading Economics and Nuveen that might indicate that renewable energy is a “safe and sustainable” supply of energy.
A spokesperson for Healey’s office told Boston 25 News that “energy costs are too high in Massachusetts and Governor Healey is focused on bringing them down.”
“Governor Healey has already taken action to lower people’s bills by $220 million in March and April, and her plan would save nearly $6 billion for electric and gas customers over the next five years,” they continued. “She also agrees that more needs to be done. Governor Healey will be filing legislation in the coming weeks to lower costs further, and she appreciates everyone’s ideas and advocacy on this important issue.”
The Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and Healey’s office did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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WHY DO YOU WANT NET ZERO? YOU AREN’T A LEMMING ARE YOU?
“My opinion is the current MSM Headline.
And whatever the next big narrative is.”
50% of the population
Not lemming.\
We are evolving to a hive mentality. “Smart Phones,” fast reaction digital media, government censorship, AI, and the evolution of cranial implanted computers.
So the Massachusetts Sierra Club wants to replace gas infrastructure which has been proven for a century or more as safe and reliable with different technology that a group of renewable activists think “might” work. Wow!
Here’s an interesting Google AI response to the question
While renewables are becoming cheaper, some states/countries with high renewable energy adoption may see higher electricity prices due to factors like grid integration costs, intermittency, and the need for backup power, which can increase overall system costs.
Here’s a breakdown of the reasons:
Excellent list. Now if only AI could be supplemented with AU (Augmented Understanding), we’d make real progress on this problem.
Yeah, we can tell the Climate Alarmists about it, but we can’t understand it for them.
I think that the life expectancy element is greatly underestimated. It requires duplication of the entire renewable facility in 20 years along with finding somewhere to dispose of huge quantities of concrete, plastic composites and metals in a manner agreeable to the environmentalists who pushed the tech. NIMBY, anyone? Perhaps the process could include staged replacements in the existing production facility, which would reduce licensing time and take advantage of the existing grid; but that would require a lot of innovation in construction technology.
The costs of wind & solar plus backup power are deliberately & systematically underestimated by the green zealots.
One might even say “Criminally Underestimated”
Perhaps demanding wind and solar solve their intermittency problem before any more is added to the system would reduce rates?
20,000 crunchy Sierra Club members on treadmills? 100,000 members on treadmills?
Why does this song keep going through my head?
” and the lights all went out in Massachusetts” the Bee Gees
Capital assets have to be paid for to insure shareholders are willing to invest, and that they also receive some expect return on investment. Since government never expects a positive return on investment, subsidies can hide a lot of foolish investment.
As long as Public Utility Commissions view investments in renewable energy as prudent or as used and useful for the delivery of energy, then utilities will either build them directly, or purchase them from developers, and then collect from ratepayers the O&M, taxes, depreciation, and return on rate base. It’s inevitable. As long as subsidies continue, people will likely overbuild renewable energy plants.
What the overbuild does is cause lowered utility of all capital expenditures. For example, in a broad market for energy, solar at mid-day in the southwestern U.S. is so plentiful that owners are willing to sell at negative prices as long as subsidies cover the O&M and taxes. Wind is also plentiful at midday often enough that one or the other will end up curtailed. Thermal plants are curtailed also, but are still needed to balance the grid. The near guarantee that there is too much available energy at times means curtailment and lowered utility of all investment. Ratepayers might, and I mean might, save on the negative power costs but will pay for over build and curtailment.
Once storage sufficient to replace thermal plants enters the grid, sufficiently meaning costs that can’t be sustained in the first place, there will be a need for yet more renewable energy at times to charge the storage. But once storage is full this extra renewable energy will have to be curtailed.
The idea that mixing together generating sources with extremely different operating characteristics, and adding lots of expensive storage and transmission that is used only occasionally, will lower rates is the triumph of hope over rational thought.
The Seagreen offshore wind farm in the North Sea has been paid £262m to curtail compared to only £104m for electricity generation and currently leads the constraints payments league table.
In 2024 it was paid to curtail 71% of the time and 3.3 TWhs of the 4.7 TWhs it generated were discarded.
Good lord. What a terrible statistic. Thanks for the info.
Nit. Words matter. Ensure, not insure.
Governor Healy promises that heating costs will go down in July and August…
What does she say about cooling costs in July and August? 🙂
From the article: ““The sharp spikes in heating bills throughout the Commonwealth in January and February have been a financial shock and burden to customers,” the letter opens. “This spike has caused real pain and has been seized upon by climate deniers and opponents of clean energy.””
That’s because “clean energy” causes real pain in the bank account.
You can’t want lower electric bills and expect to get that by building more windmills and solar. They are diametrically opposed. The more windmills and solar you build, the more expensive electricity becomes.
Climate Alarmists ignore this fact of life because windmills and solar are their only “solutions” to the Climate Crisis they believe in, so they can’t give them up.
If you promote windmills and solar, you are promoting increased electricity bills.
Democrats, Marxists, and the left in general, though I repeat myself, are reality deniers.
Americans’ Soaring Utility Bills
American energy is ~25% of the cost in the UK. I suppose our bills are hyper-soaring?
Use a Ninja sword to cut your bills while you still can. 🙂
So you can count the UK out wrt development of AI and bit coin mining. I’m afraid the UK is traveling down the road to being a third-world country, and the number of turnoffs on that road are becoming scarce.
Well, until those roads are also closed to traffic.
A 15 minute city does not get you to AI or bit coin mining.
I see this as an opportunity. We need to gather our best people and record the total cost for land acquisition, construction, distribution and hook up to the grid for all wind and solar operations servicing Massachusetts. In state and out of state, we need to record the cost to maintain these systems. We need to record the cost to dismantle these systems. We need to especially point out the life expectancy of these systems. We need to point out the wildlife killed and maimed by these systems especially protected species. We need to point out that government has mandated that wind and solar have preference to the grid. We need to point out that because they have preference thermal generators are forced to operate at lower capacity or on stand by thus raising the cost of thermal power. We need to point out that wind and solar are guaranteed a minimum price for their power which is higher than normal. We need to point out that wind and solar are guaranteed income even when they aren’t producing power. We have to remind people that it is only because of thermal power that wind and solar can be in the game otherwise we would experience regular brownouts or blackouts. I would include hydro but these same people are advocating for the removal of our existing dams. We need to point out that storage is not a substitute for thermal because of cost and we would have to overbuild by orders of magnitude. There is a reason you are paying so much for your power, that is because you are getting exactly what you have asked for. Wind and solar can’t stand on their own, fossil fuel, nuclear and hydro can. We don’t need wind and solar and we damn sure can’t afford it.
Fire up all fossil fuels d nuclear generators, build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators. Remove all wind and solar from the grid. We can spend the savings on ribeye steaks, yum.
But, but, but – ignore all of your points and just look at Bryan A’s AI response at 10:13 am above:
“While the cost of renewable energy technologies has decreased”
/sarc
Engineers calculated the MFB for wind generators at about 4.3 years with nearly 50% of the maintenance/repairs being major (read that expensive) components.
Whether or not those estimates reflect reality does not divert from the point that the mean time between failures needs a real engineering assessment. They do not last 20 years without maintenance and repair. Turbine blades and solar cells are not good for landfills. The recycling infrastructure is for all practical purposes non-existent. Batteries, even worse.
Green Energy, particularly wind and solar, is consistently proving to be too costly and too unreliable for large scale adoption. If money is to be spent on any type of it, let it be on hydro and nuclear because they work and any rate increases from them can be justified to consumers, businesses and industries. End of story unless some monumental technological breakthrough occurs.
“We need a multi-trillion dollar investment in the infrastructure necessary to weather and avert climate change, not a bipartisan bill with climate deniers. “#NoClimateNoDeal. pic.twitter.com/nDEH2Xxchz
— Sierra Club (@SierraClub) June 23, 2021
TANSTAFFL; There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
Multi-trillion dollar private investments require multi-hundred billion dollar annual returns or they will not occur. Similar government “investments” would be made with new federal debt and we certainly don’t need any more of that.
Investments made to increase generation earn their returns from incremental consumption. Investments made to replace existing, operational generating capacity with renewable generating capacity require that the existing generating capacity remain operational to “fill in the blanks” when renewable generation is not operating or operating at reduced capacity. That is inflationary, since additional investment and cost is serving existing load. Of course, renewable generation could rely on storage to “fill in the blanks”, but storage is many times more expensive than the existing generating capacity and the added renewable generating capacity.
The left has a tendency to assume that good intentions are sufficient to overcome technical difficulties.
“A tendency?”
Tom Lehrer satirized the difference between intentions and results 60 years ago in his intro to his song, “The New Math.”
“The important thing is to understand what you’re doing, rather than to get the right answer.”
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
I always wondered about that. How can you prove you understand what you’re doing if you can’t get the right answer.
Show your work. Let the teacher have a red pen to annotate where the mistake occurred.
Why do we fall down? So we can learn how to get back up.
Self-esteem comes from facing failures and learning how to not repeat.
Self-esteem comes from knowing you can tackle the problems you face.
Translation: A policy declaration is good engineering practice. (Not!)
“The letter demands quicker action on lowering utility bills, outlining the first step as reducing infrastructure spending unless it is “financially appropriate.”
“It’s not fast enough to help with energy burden,” Vick Mohanka, the chapter director for Sierra Club’s Massachusetts chapter, told Boston 25 News.”
Wait, that explains it! All of those Tesla EVs are draining too much energy. For the sake of the environment, they must burn all electric vehicles, regardless of the resulting toxic emissions, to lower electricity demand!
Whilst I agree that windmills and solar farms are an inefficient way of producing reliable energy, I find the following quote from the article addresses a significant issue which should be addressed.
“In 2023 alone, Massachusetts gas customers were charged $160 million to hook up additional buildings to the gas system, an average cost of nearly $10,000 per new customer for infrastructure that only serves those customers.”
Are there any homes which don’t need electricity? I don’t think so.
Are there any home which don’t need a gas supply to the house? Absolutely yes!
For most of my life I’ve never lived in a house that used gas cookers and heaters.
Since all houses, and buildings in general, require electricity connection and infrastructure, why waste money to provide an additional source of energy that can already be provided by electricity. It’s much more sensible to use that gas to produce electricity which can then be delivered efficiently to every house and building through existing infrastructure.
It might also be more efficient for a home owner to spend that $10,000 on a few solar panels with battery storage. I’m Australian, but I did a search for how many solar panels with battery storage could be bought in the USA with $10,000. The answer was:
“With a $10,000 budget in the USA, you could potentially purchase a smaller solar panel system (around 3-5 kW) and a small battery storage system (around 5-10 kWh), depending on the specific products and installation costs.”
Boston Massachusetts is 42°21′37″N latitude
Hobart in Tasmania is 42°52′50″S latitude
Adelaide in South Australia is 34°55′39″S latitude
Adelaide has 100% more rooftop solar installations than Hobart does.
I’ll let you figure out why that might be so.
There must be something magical about solar and the sun outside Boston, MA. Last time I visited my old home town in the Boston ‘burbs there are a surprising number of residential panels on North facing roofs and/or shaded by stands of trees. I didn’t see any mirrors redirecting sunlight. Maybe Maura and her green buds have figured out how to get solar production at night? Couldn’t possibly be the subsidies and “tax breaks”.
Burning natural gas in the home is a much more efficient use of natural gas than burning it in a power plant.
This is what I found from an internet search.
“In general, natural gas is often cheaper than electricity for heating, hot water, and cooking in the long run, but it can involve higher upfront costs for installation and gas appliances.”
“You’re also limited to a handful of appliances, like hot water tanks and heaters. So, you’ll still be hit with two energy bills every quarter. But when you switch to electricity, you can power your entire home through a single source.”
Also, I found the following negative effect of using household gas.
“The use of household gas for heating and cooking has been linked to severe health risks, and is estimated to be responsible for 12% of the burden of childhood asthma in Australia.”
How do you cook or heat the house during a power outage? Especially an extended one like we had a few winters ago?
Ah, we now have to trust authority with no means to review the source.
Google? LOL
In the UK over 22m of the 28+ m homes are on the gas network and use that energy because it is 4 times cheaper than electricity especially in keeping homes warm
An internet search reveals that electricity prices in the UK are around 4 times more expensive than they are in certain states in the USA, such as North Dakota.
I agree that the UK has a serious problem with its drive to net zero. It needs to get its electricity prices down.
How did those prices compare 20 years ago or 30 0r 40. How much of this price differential is due to the insane drive to Net Zero, including demolishing all coal generator plants?
Net Zero has already been shown to bean unworkable nonsense – even if it were achievable, which it is not.. The EU and UK and many more countries world wide are winding their ideas down – and saving money at the same time.
Simple solution. Reduce their gas bills to zero by shutting off their connection. Use wood stoves or electric heaters to keep warm. Maybe they’ll wake up from taking cold showers, but I doubt it.