More Moratoria On Natural Gas Hook-Ups Announced For NYC, New England -- February 7, 2019

Wow, before I even get started, I see renewable energy is down to a new low in New England, contributing only 7% to the grid. Natural gas is now supplying more than 51% of electricity for New England.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Before I get started, a huge "thank you" to the reader who alerted me to this. This particular reader does not write me often, but when he does it's always incredibly good information. Based on what he sends me, I doubt anyone knows more about the natural gas sector in the northeast United States than he does.

Years ago I worked in a NYC bedroom community, Westfield, NJ. It was important for me to "know" the jurisdictional boundaries of cities, counties, states.

Throw in the boroughs of NYC and it comes even more complicated.

The City of New York is made up of five boroughs. The State of New York is made up of counties. Each City borough is also State county.

• Manhattan - New York County
• Bronx - Bronx County
• Brooklyn - Kings County
• Queens - Queens County
• Staten Island - Richmond County

There are several counties in the area:

• Westchester County: includes Yonkers, New Rochelle, Mount Vernon, and White Plains
• On Long Island:
• Brooklyn County
• Nassau County
• Queens County
• Suffolk County

I do that for my benefit. I became more interested in the geography of the area after reading The Great Gatsby.

But the geography is important for me for other reasons.

A reader reminds me that two utilities in the NYC area have announced moratoria on new natural gas hook-ups (previously posted, but I can't keep track of all this).

From a reader:

Huge utility, Con Ed, rocked New York city area by declaring a moratorium on new gas hookups in Westchester starting in a few weeks (March 15). Developers are apoplectic as this means no new construction will occur sans economical natgas supply.

Second, large utility - National Grid - just followed up with another body blow to region by declaring a new gas hookup moratorium starting May 15 for Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island.

The reader writes:

There is a short (24 mile long) gas pipeline Northeast Expansion Supply - that would alleviate most of this shortfall, but politics has been holding up construction.

The writer suggests that there are very "big" developers, business interests that won't "go belly up to Save the Planet."

The moratoria?

It's serious. See this this article over at lohud.

Con Ed could run out of natural gas before the moratorium is put into place.