Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Thursday warned the leaders of Northeast states who are trying to block natural gas pipelines that they will face a “real reckoning” of higher energy costs and vulnerabilities in their power grid.
“The citizens of New York are paying more for energy,” Perry said during a panel session at the World Gas Conference in Washington. “Their health and well-being is being put in jeopardy. If a polar vortex comes into the northeast part of the country, or a cyberattack, and people literally have to start making decisions on how to keep their family warm or keep the lights on, at that time, the leadership of that state will have a real reckoning. I wouldn’t want to be the governor of that state facing that situation.
“We have to have conversation as a country, is that a national security issue that outweighs the political concerns in Albany, N.Y.?” Perry added.
The Northeast, especially New England, is heavily dependent on cheap natural gas, which accounts for about half of its power generation, for electricity and home heating, as many of New England’s aging and money-losing coal and nuclear plants have retired.
But New England struggles to import enough natural gas from areas that produce it, such as the Marcellus shale formation in the Appalachian states, most acutely during the winter because of a lack of sufficient pipelines.
New England was forced to use dual-fuel power plants to burn carbon-laden oil for electricity during January’s deep freeze, known as the “bomb cyclone,” using about 2 million barrels.
That’s more than twice the oil burned in all of 2016, according to ISO New England, the operator that runs the region’s power grid.
ISO New England warned in a February report that, without new infrastructure, “keeping the lights on in New England will become an even more tenuous proposition.”
States such as New York, meanwhile, have used a provision under the Clean Water Act to deny water permits, blocking interstate pipeline projects.
Many Northeast states have renewable fuel standards, requiring utilities to obtain an increasing amount of energy from clean energy sources such as wind and solar, which encourages them to resist natural gas, a fossil fuel that emits half the carbon dioxide as coal.
While Perry hyped the importance of natural gas to grid resiliency, he has made the same argument for coal and nuclear power. Perry’s Energy Department is considering subsidizing money-losing coal and nuclear plants for their ability to store fuel on-site and provide around-the-clock power, a move that would harm natural gas, a cheaper competitor.
