Magical thinking has now led to an impending crisis in New England which relies more heavily on natural gas for home energy and heating than anywhere else in the country.

Resistance to building new gas pipelines in the liberal Northeast, along with the failure of so-called “green” technologies to provide any substantial increase in energy, has helped create the crisis.

As reported by grid.news, since 2000, New England has been aggressively moving away from oil and coal. In that time, use and reliance on natural gas has increased three-fold.

Energy from wind and solar and hydro, meanwhile, has resulted in just a four percent uptick in energy, from 8 to 12 percent.

Those policies are now colliding with a Russian-Ukraine conflict exacerbated by the Biden Administration’s hardline stance rejecting negotiations.

“If you have a very cold day, or if you have any extended cold stretch of days, you have an issue of not having enough fuel to meet combined heating and electricity needs of the region,” Caitlin Marquis, a director at Advanced Energy Economy, commented about the looming problems, according to grid.news. “There is limited infrastructure, and [there hasn’t] been much investment in supply infrastructure for a while.”

And what has NY Governor Kath Hochul been doing regarding natural gas supply and infrastructure in the region?

Kill it.

A June 2022 story at naturalgasintel.com reported how Hochul, in her first state of the state speech, announced plans to stop installing fossil fuel hookups in new construction across the state within five years, including natural gas hookups.

She promised legislation meant to phase out natural gas usage in New York, though the U.S. has one of the most plentiful supplies in the world.

Needless to say, Hochul has not been drawing up any plans to increase natural gas infrastructure or production.

But New England can blame itself as well. And with a general economic “dragflation” malaise also hitting consumers, it’s a perfect storm that may leave the region shuddering, sneezing and paying through the nose to try to keep warm.