Will Newport’s Gas Emergency Spark RI to Move Faster to Adopt Wind and Solar
Friday, January 25, 2019
Ten thousand people’s lives have been directly thrown into upheaval, and indirectly, thousands of employees of small businesses in Newport have been impacted this week due to a gas supply failure.
In addition, thousands of children have been unable to attend school and many Newport small businesses will be pushed to the economic breaking point due to the forced closures.
Rhode Island is overwhelmingly dependent on natural gas and has one of the lowest percentages of alternative energy supplies from renewables — especially wind and solar.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAccording to Discover Newport, the organization for Newport tourism industry, more than 50 restaurants and hotels are still closed impacting more than 1,000 workers. This does not count the more than estimated 500 other small businesses forced to close.
RI's Dependency on Piped and Shipped Natural Gas
Rhode Island’s Office of Energy states, “Natural gas is not a fuel indigenous to New England. Gas brought into the region originates primarily from production in the Appalachian region, the Gulf Coast, and to a lesser extent, Canada. The vast majority of natural gas consumed in Rhode Island arrives via pipelines developed and operated by the Algonquin Gas Transmission Company and the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) Company. “
“The remainder is transported as liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the state via tanker trucks. The Algonquin Gas Transmission is an interstate pipeline that transports natural gas from New Jersey throughout New England. The TGP is a major interstate pipeline that extends from the Texas / Mexico border to eastern Massachusetts,” it explains.
A recent New York Times story exposed Rhode Island’s vulnerabilities in the rawest terms.
"Natural gas dominates electricity generation in Rhode Island, but wind and solar energy, while still small, have grown quickly in recent years. Rhode Island will require electricity providers to get nearly two-fifths of the power they sell to consumers from renewable sources by 2035. The state consumes more electricity than it generates and gets the rest from neighboring states," reports the Times. Despite initiatives to increase renewables -- clean energy -- the percentage of electricity produced by natural gas has decreased from 98 percent in 2001 to 94 percent in 2017.”
Dispute Between Foreign Energy Conglomerates
The cause of the state of emergency is in dispute between the two major foreign-owned energy conglomerates involved.
The British energy company National Grid, plc and Enbridge, the Canadian energy giant, which owns the Algonquin Gas Transmission, are in dispute over the cause of the gas supply failure which has triggered the state of emergency.
While National Grid is pointing the finger at Enbridge, the Canadian company disputes the claim. As GoLocal first reported, there are questions about the potential relationship between a pipeline explosion in Ohio and the Rhode Island low-pressure issue.
"There is no connection between the event in Ohio and what happened in Rhode Island," spokesperson Michael Barnes wrote to Utility Dive in an email. "It is my understanding that Line 10 was flowing south away from the [New England], so it was not feeding into [New England]."
Instead, Enbridge said that cold temperatures caused "significantly higher demand" for gas on Algonquin, "which resulted in a disruption in service to a number of natural gas customers on Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island."
"A temporary reduction in available natural gas supply into the Algonquin system exacerbated the conditions that led to this disruption in service," the company said in an emailed statement. "We are collaborating with the local gas company and working diligently to assist in any way we can with gas service restoration efforts."
Dependency and Vulnerability
In March 2017, Governor Gina Raimondo announced a strategic goal to increase the state's clean energy ten-fold by the end of 2020 – achieving a total of 1,000 MW of clean energy projects. As of the end of the third quarter of 2018, the state has counted approximately 166 MW of added clean energy generation capacity, resulting in a total of 304 MW. As the effort is now moving forward, but it is just a tiny fraction of Rhode Island’s energy usage.
New initiatives are in development or have recently come online — Deepwater Wind'a Block Island initiative, a new onshore wind project in Johnston near the landfill began operation at the end of 2018, and there are numerous solar initiatives across the state, but the state lags almost every other state in America.
