Guest columnist Stephen Fox: Just not ready for clean energy future
![Federal, state and local officials cut a ribbon in late November in front of an EV charging station at the new Leary Lot opening in the center of South Deerfield. The lot has two high-speed charging stations and two dual-use chargers, although advocates say the rollout of such stations nationwide has been slower than hoped. Federal, state and local officials cut a ribbon in late November in front of an EV charging station at the new Leary Lot opening in the center of South Deerfield. The lot has two high-speed charging stations and two dual-use chargers, although advocates say the rollout of such stations nationwide has been slower than hoped.](/attachments/81/48413781.jpg)
Federal, state and local officials cut a ribbon in late November in front of an EV charging station at the new Leary Lot opening in the center of South Deerfield. The lot has two high-speed charging stations and two dual-use chargers, although advocates say the rollout of such stations nationwide has been slower than hoped. STAFF FILE PHOTO
Published: 01-29-2025 9:59 PM |
I am a climate change believer and conservationist, but I see a few problems with the way Massachusetts is dealing with this change. An article in the Boston Globe about heat pumps in Massachusetts got me to thinking about where we are in respect to the future and our energy use in it.
First, we must realize that to get from one place to another requires planning, preparation and patience. One cannot simply remove all internal combustion vehicles and replace them with EVs until we have sufficient capacity for the extra power that will be required in our electrical grid.
Charging stations should be in place in sufficient quantities to charge the EVs on the road. But that would have required planning by a group that was composed of folks with various point of view developing a strategic, sensible and timely schedule to transition from reliance on polluting fuels to sources with far less or no pollution.
Air source heat pumps aren’t yet suitable for Massachusetts winters, regardless of the hype, as below certain temps users must bring on less efficient heat sources to make up for their lack of capacity. That’s why electric bills jump, when that radiant or other supplemental heat has to come on to make up for capacity that diminishes as outside temps drop.
Maybe we can figure out cheaper and better ways of heating, like use of geothermal energy, first for heat pumps and then perhaps for actually heating. Progress is being made and will continue, hopefully.
Second, to ban the older technologies before the replacements are ready causes unintended consequences because regulations that assume the replacement technology is there waiting for us to use can lead to serious problems from these well-meaning but impractical mandates. Every winter our Massachusetts electrical grid gets closer and closer to failure due to lack of natural gas pipelines and electric grid capacity.
We cannot shut down oil or coal-fired plants without a reliable fuel source for electric generation to take its place unless we are ready to face a winter where our grid breaks down and folks freeze to death. When the collapse of our grid causes huge problems, I’m sure all the politicians and folks who backed us into this corner we are in will want to blame someone else, likely “greedy corporations” for the situation that they helped cause through lack of knowledge, patience and foresight.
Article continues after...
Yesterday's Most Read Articles
![](/attachments/72/48677972.jpg)
![](/attachments/64/48713064.jpg)
![](/attachments/42/48699542.jpg)
![](/attachments/78/48681778.jpg)
![](/attachments/93/48698593.jpg)
![](/attachments/97/48681797.jpg)
Natural gas adoption has brought about a huge reduction in U.S. CO2 generation and pollution from oil or coal-fired plants. This by itself is a huge benefit. Since 1971, Massachusetts has led the nation in LNG (liquified natural gas) use because our lack of pipelines means we must close a harbor to all traffic so that huge LNG ships, each carrying 3 billion cubic feet of gas compressed into liquid, can offload at the Everett terminal.
Each ship is a giant bomb that we bring into our harbors instead of using buried pipelines. Around 40 to 60 ships’ cargoes are delivered each year, which then go to power a nearby power plant, or get put into our internal pipeline system or more dangerously, put into the LNG trucks that are on the Pike and local roads alongside your kids’ school bus. No safety concerns here, right?
Third, we need a sincere effort on the part of scientists, politicians and conservationists to educate the public to the dangers we face if we don’t change our energy use and spelling out point by point how we all must work together for the common good without scolding or fear-mongering. This might lead to results like our neighbors in Maine not protecting their woods from “unsightly” power lines that could have brought us clean hydropower from Canada. NIMBY is prevalent and folks with enough money and power can either prevent sitings of necessary infrastructure or demand it go through neighborhoods and communities with less money and political clout.
And nuclear? We have many folks in the state who lived through the China Syndrome era who believe that nuclear power is death, plain and simple, no matter that the technology is very much improved and still improving on a form of energy that offers less overall pollution in its life cycle than most other forms. It is available 24/7 and extremely efficient, so it will most likely be a part of a well thought-out plan to eliminate air and water pollution.
Folks don’t realize that surging use of EVs, AI and mining digital currency will require far more power and infrastructure than the U.S. currently has by multiples of current levels. Just renewables won’t cut it until huge advances in generation, and more importantly storage, are made.
The future promises many great, miraculous and sometimes scary things. It can be a lot less scary if we have a well thought-out process to get from point A to B that we all benefit from without excessive financial or health and safety concerns. We need a public initiative to create this process and inform us all how we get there, not random, politically motivated bills that attack the problem piecemeal and out of logical order.
Here’s to a better future with clean air, water and power!
PS: I’d like to make the point that natural gas isn’t a “fossil fuel.” While it can be found together with oil or coal, it can be produced by digestion of substances by bacteria and is also generated in landfills and cows’ stomachs, two places you are unlikely to find prehistoric dinosaur remains. So, it is a hydrocarbon, but not a “fossil” fuel.
Stephen Fox, a practical progressive, lives in South Hadley.