Energy News Beat
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.
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.
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.
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.
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