Energy News for week ending January 10, 2020

Future of Natural Gas | TCI Club Shrinking | North Country Hydrogen

Happy Friday afternoon folks. It’s nice to be back in your inboxes. Let’s get right to the first 2020 edition of the Northeast Energy News.

First up is a McKinsey report, The Future of Natural Gas in North America. “Industry discussions about the future of gas in North America are polarizing. On one hand, the shale revolution keeps delivering, displacing liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports since the late 2000s, as abundant gas resources and technological innovation drove costs down. In the past few years, shale has entered a new phase with the rise of LNG exports from North America. By 2023, North America is expected to head the list of the world’s top LNG exporting regions. On the other hand, as state-level decarbonization policies ramp up, the demand for natural gas in key segments such as power generation and local distribution companies (LDC) is expected to decline.” To the right is a map from the report that shows the decarbonization efforts across the US.

Before the holiday break the Transportation Climate Initiative was all the rage. But it seems there has been some cooling off since news of the costs have been shared. From CommonWealth Magazine, “In a protest-interrupted State of the State address Thursday, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott cast a shadow on the prospects of him signing his state up for a multi-state compact to reduce vehicle emissions. Scott, who along with Gov. Charlie Baker is one of two Republican governors in New England, did not address the Transportation Climate Initiative by name, but discussed at length ways Vermont has been working to incentivize the purchase of electric vehicles. ‘It’s incentives, not penalties, which will help us transition more quickly,’ Scott said in his speech. Vermont was one of the 12 original states to begin negotiations on a regional cap-and-trade program that would seek to reduce carbon pollution from cars and trucks and use revenue from the sale of carbon allowances to fuel suppliers to invest in clean transportation options. New Hampshire has since withdrawn from those talks after the coalitions estimated that the proposals under consideration could add between 5 cents and 17 cents to the price of a gallon of gas…Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, also said this week that he has concerns with TCI. ‘Raising the gas tax, which frankly is what many Republican states have done to pay for transportation, is 100 percent paid for by Connecticut residents and probably not the way to go,’ Lamont said in a WNPR radio interview on Tuesday when asked about the initiative.”

For our new technology story this week we head to New Hampshire. From the Concord Monitor, “The company installing a factory in a former North Country paper mill hopes to create hydrogen, which some see as the ultimate clean fuel, through a process of compression that appears unlike any existing technology in that field. And while the company’s immediate plan is to burn the hydrogen to create electricity, the long-range plan is much bigger. ‘The real intent of coming out with a power plant is because it will unveil our capabilities in a big way,’ said Whitaker Irvin Jr., president and CEO of QuasarWave, the Utah firm behind the project in the closed Wausau Paper mill in the Groveton section of Northumberland. ‘When you’re talking about running a power plant on hydrogen … in a way to make it cost-effective … that’s not nebulous…’ The plan for QuasarWave is to take water from the Upper Ammonoosuc River, separate out the hydrogen and burn it in a reciprocating engine to produce electricity that will be sold to companies on site. Irvin says this electricity will be cheaper than can be bought on the grid…Details about the technology that will separate out the hydrogen, which is the whole point of the operation, are proprietary.”