“Natural gas prices have not been this high in New England since 2008 — before the fracking revolution, mortgage crisis and Great Recession caused energy prices to crash.” -Tanya Bodell, an energy adviser and partner at consulting firm StoneTurn.
The 2022 energy crunch is old news at this point. However, whereas gas and electricity prices in Europe have recently dropped, now sitting around pre-war levels, electricity bills in America's northeast keep going up. Prices differ throughout the New England region, but Massachusset’s largest utility, for example, raised rates about 64 percent last month.
Luckily, New England, like the rest of the eastern seaboard, has had a mild winter so far. Temperatures are projected to reach into the mid 50’s this week around Boston, and they won’t dip far below freezing.
What happens, however, if the second half of winter is colder than the first? The region will have a full blown energy emergency on its hands. People will go broke trying to heat their homes, or bare the serious health consequences of keeping the heat off.
If there’s any silver lining to New England’s predicament it’s that this crisis might provide the impetus for Maine and New Hampshire residents to finally allow new transmission lines to go up. The transmission projects, which have so far been thwarted by community input mechanisms in the two states, would deliver much needed hydro power from Quebec to New England. New votes, however, might bear different results now that residents understand the true near term consequences of being so reliant on natural gas.