Electrification proponents will be hard pressed to point to a study indicating a viable path to net-zero emissions in the Northeast that involves the widespread electrification of home heating. A plan that substantially increases electricity demand in winter months, and then intends to meet that demand with 100 percent renewable electricity at a time when renewable generation is seasonally hamstrung, has been deemed problematic not only by leading energy experts (Source), but also by the operator of New England’s wholesale electricity market (Source: page 4-5). Even given today’s energy landscape, with renewable fuels generating only 9 percent of New England’s electricity (Source: page 3) and more than 85 percent of homes not heating with electricity at all (Source: page 2-3), ISO-New England has stated that “Fuel-security – the possibility that power plants won’t have or be able to get the fuel they need to run, particularly in winter – is the foremost challenge to a reliable power grid in New England” (Source: page 4).

As former US Secretary of Energy and founder of the MIT Energy Initiative, Ernest J. Moniz, asserted in a recent Boston Globe Op-ed: “[New England’s decarbonization] success would come earlier if the oil and gas industry uses its capabilities and workforce to advance net-zero solutions while avoiding stranded workers, stranded communities, and stranded assets.”

With renewable liquid heating fuel, that’s exactly what America’s farmers and fuelers have been working to achieve.

Policy-driven electrification will disproportionately impact middle-class and low-income residents. With the per-household cost of electrification typically much higher in older homes that require retrofitting (relative to costs for newly constructed households), given the concentration of lower income consumers in older homes, the cost of policy-driven electrification will fall more heavily on lower income residents. Additionally, those who are unable to afford electrification will be left to pay for legacy infrastructure systems (e.g., natural gas distribution or heating oil delivery), the costs of which must be recovered from ever fewer customers, thereby driving up the price of delivered energy even beyond the added cost of carbon taxation. Such perilous market conditions would inevitably force thousands of liquid heating fuel retailers – 97 percent of which are multigenerational family-owned businesses (Source) who employ an average of 52 people from their local communities (Source) – to close their doors, placing the heating needs of their decades-long customers in the hands of a large utility company. By contrast, policy that supports renewable liquid heating fuel would come at little or no cost to consumers, help keep utility rates in check for all, and keep tens of thousands of workers employed through, and in fact stewards of, the clean energy transition.