Gov. Phil Murphy this month blocked maintenance of natural gas pipelines providing the cheapest energy for winter heating to New Jersey residents. He also announced a ban on vehicles using gasoline and efforts to force drivers to buy electric cars.
Staff photo
There’s good news in the federal forecast for heating costs this coming winter. The four kinds of fuel predominantly used in New Jersey and tracked by the U.S. Energy Information Administration should all be at least a bit cheaper.
Only users of natural gas and propane, however, are expected to see substantial savings. And only natural gas will cost Northeast homeowners about half as much as those heating with electric or oil.
The average Northeast household expense for heating with natural gas this winter is forecast to be $761. That’s down 22% from last year.
Propane, a popular choice for rural South Jersey residents who can’t get natural gas service at their homes, is expected to cost $1,696 — 17% lower than last winter.
Electric heat for the winter is forecast to cost $1,465, just 1% less than last year. Oil users should spend $1,851 for the season, about 4% less.
No wonder there are 12 million households in the Northeast that heat with natural gas. Just 4 million heat with electricity. Natural gas is the main fuel for heating in 46% of U.S. homes, making it the most widely used energy for heating in the country.
New Jersey residents better enjoy the benefits of low cost natural gas while they can. Gov. Phil Murphy and his supporters in the Legislature and among climate-crisis advocates want to force the public to heat with electric, without bothering to build political or even scientific support for such an extreme energy shift.
Previously they’ve opposed any new pipeline that would bring some of the nation’s abundant natural gas resource to and through New Jersey.
Now Murphy, at the urging of his Office of Climate Action, is blocking maintenance of natural gas pipelines already serving New Jersey residents.
PSE&G is New Jersey’s largest utility, delivering natural gas and electric to areas hosting about 70% of the state’s population. The company has 1.7 million gas customers.
The company has some of the oldest gas pipelines in the country, many of which are 70 to 100 years old. PSEG sought permission this year to invest $2.5 billion to replace 1,140 miles of leak-prone pipelines over the next three years.
For safety’s sake and the benefit to millions of consumers in New Jersey, that sounds like a no-brainer. The state should be grateful a corporation is spending serious money in the interests of its customers and all people living near its pipelines.
But instead, the Murphy administration wouldn’t authorize most of the maintenance spending. It only OK’d $900 million to replace about 400 miles of pipeline the next two years and make other system improvements. The executive order by Murphy said it instead will study how to reduce gas-delivery systems in the state. Murphy’s Office of Climate Action said it will consider the future use of gas and take recommendations from a consultant on using less of it.
Natural gas burns cleanly and offers substantially lower pollution than oil and coal. The bulk of the reductions in global warming emissions the past two decades have come from switching to natural gas from oil and coal.
As such, environmentalists once expected natural gas to provide an energy bridge for America to transition to renewable, ultra-low emission forms of energy. That would give those industries and technologies time to mature and reliably provide the increasing amount of energy the nation needs.
But now, political climate zealots insist on trying to force energy changes at great cost to consumers, if they can be done at all.
The same political goals are behind the Murphy administration’s announcement this month that it will ban the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.
In both cases, Murphy and the political activist groups supporting him don’t dare to straightforwardly order people to only use electric power in their homes and cars. Instead, they are using regulations to drive up the cost of non-electric power and drive down the quality of non-electric cars.
Automakers already are scaling back their electric vehicle plans in the face of weak demand for the vehicles, even though they are heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Energy forecasters see no alternative to meet the nation’s growing needs without many years of continued use of natural gas and oil.
There is no politics that can make even a climate-frenzied big energy shift in a matter of years, short of making the U.S. the authoritarian state it was meant to never be.
Stuart Turley is President and CEO of Sandstone Group, a top energy data, and finance consultancy working with companies all throughout the energy value chain. Sandstone helps both small and large-cap energy companies to develop customized applications and manage data workflows/integration throughout the entire business. With experience implementing enterprise networks, supercomputers, and cellular tower solutions, Sandstone has become a trusted source and advisor. He is also the Executive Publisher of www.energynewsbeat.com, the best source for 24/7 energy news coverage, and is the Co-Host of the energy news video and Podcast Energy News Beat. Energy should be used to elevate humanity out of poverty. Let's use all forms of energy with the least impact on the environment while being sustainable without printing money. Stu is also a co-host on the 3 Podcasters Walk into A Bar podcast with David Blackmon, and Rey Trevino.
Stuart is guided by over 30 years of business management experience, having successfully built and help sell multiple small and medium businesses while consulting for numerous Fortune 500 companies. He holds a B.A in Business Administration from Oklahoma State and an MBA from Oklahoma City University.
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