Blackouts and Worse: Dems Policies Killing New England
The progressive elite war against coal energy producers is playing out like a chapter in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. In a case of delicious irony, the liberal New England region is getting slammed for its lack of energy diversity.
New England’s energy mess stems from its overreliance on natural gas and an insufficient transportation network to carry the fuel. Just like the Aristotelian axiom of A=A, liberals are now learning they are not immune to the law of supply and demand.
The loss of coal-fired power, long urged by local activists, has greatly contributed to the region’s energy imbalance.
Since the turn of the century, the use of coal dropped significantly in New England while the use of natural gas rose dramatically. An article from Scientific American noted in 2012 that coal provided 3 percent of the region’s power down from 18 percent, while over the same time period natural gas use exploded from 15 percent to 52 percent.
But in a case of classic central planning failure, the region did not build a pipeline infrastructure to meet the surge in demand.
Read my entire commentary at RealClearEnergy.com.
