OUTSIDE THE STATE LEGISLATURE’S doors, our air was filled with wildfire smoke from Canada and extreme heat, while record flooding wiped out farms and livelihoods in western Massachusetts. Inside, lobbyists and special interests used a flawed academic report in an attempt to undermine Massachusetts’s climate goals, creating false headlines designed to push us back decades.(...)
Natural gas (not bottled propane) is generally still much cheaper per net BTU in most of the US for heating. I had to make a choice back in ~2005 when I switched from oil heat. At the time - with NG near it’s historical highs and my local electricity just 10c/hWh - they were on par, with electric having a theoretical advantage in ideal conditions and near parity in our coldest 2 months of the year. Of course since then electric has gone up 50% and NG has dropped by a factor of 3. To stich now would be prohibitively expensive, though, as the cost to extend the NG line has tripled (to around $15k or more). I’ll never make that back in energy savings.
Natural gas (not bottled propane) is generally still much cheaper per net BTU in most of the US for heating. I had to make a choice back in ~2005 when I switched from oil heat. At the time - with NG near it’s historical highs and my local electricity just 10c/hWh - they were on par, with electric having a theoretical advantage in ideal conditions and near parity in our coldest 2 months of the year. Of course since then electric has gone up 50% and NG has dropped by a factor of 3. To stich now would be prohibitively expensive, though, as the cost to extend the NG line has tripled (to around $15k or more). I’ll never make that back in energy savings.