Gov. Kelly Ayotte announced her support this week for a pipeline project that would bring natural gas from Pennsylvania to New York.
During a visit from Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, Ayotte said she hoped New York leaders would take new interest in the Constitution Pipeline, which was initially approved in 2014 but shuttered in 2020.
President Trump has expressed his desire to revive that project. According to a timeline on the website of Williams, the company that proposed the pipeline, it intends to submit federal and state applications this year and begin construction in late 2026.
“This project will allow us to strengthen regional energy reliability, without the need for new pipelines in New Hampshire,” Ayotte said in a written statement to NHPR. “Expanding natural gas access is consistent with my all-of-the-above energy strategy to make life more affordable for Granite Staters. By increasing supply, we can help stabilize prices and reduce the volatility that has burdened our region for far too long.”
But it is unclear if the pipeline, which is expected to end in New York, would actually increase gas flows in New England, said Dan Dolan, the head of the New England Power Generators Association.
“The pipelines into New England, particularly at peak moments, and throughout much of the year, are at full capacity,” Dolan said.
Ayotte’s office did not respond to a question about whether existing infrastructure in New Hampshire could handle increased gas flows.
Williams says the Constitution Pipeline could provide enough gas to supply the daily needs of about 3 million homes in the Northeast, and bills it as a solution for high prices in New England.
New England’s electric grid is heavily reliant on gas, getting more than half of its electricity from that fossil fuel. One of the main challenges for the regional grid, Dolan said, is that when electricity demand is at its highest, generators have to rely on storable fuels like oil, which has higher carbon emissions and is more expensive than gas.
“To the degree there was a way to unlock that in such a way that consumers still saw an economic net benefit — even when you account for the billions of dollars it would take to build a new pipeline – then I think there's a conversation to be had,” Dolan said.
But leaders in the Northeast have been discussing building new gas pipelines for years. A continuing challenge is the search for a counterparty — an organization that would sign up for 20 or more years of commitments to use the gas.
“I'm not sure who that counterparty is who is willing to make that level of a capital investment for a fuel supply like natural gas right now into the region,” Dolan said.
Dolan says the past several months have been particularly turbulent for the energy industry, as goals for decarbonization and clean energy development advanced by the Biden Administration — and billions of dollars of investments — are reconsidered, and affordability is prioritized.
“Until there is more clarity in direction from states and Washington around that. It's a real challenge right now for the industry to determine where exactly should multi-decade investments flow,” he said.
Jamie Dickerson, senior director of climate and clean energy programs with the Acadia Center, which advocates for cutting carbon emissions in the Northeast, said customers may be worse off if a new pipeline were built.
“We see that it's much more likely that prices would go up rather than go down as a result,” he said.
Domestic gas prices continue to grow more volatile in the global market which means unreliable prices for consumers, he said. He highlighted the spike in gas prices in 2022 as a result of the war in Ukraine as an example of that international context.
Pipelines and natural gas infrastructure are also expensive – both to construct and to maintain — and customers are usually the ones footing those bills, Dickerson said.
“We already have this multi-billion dollar gas network underneath our streets,” he said. “There is really a huge, looming bill that is coming due over the next 10 years that I think the general public is not aware of, and only increases the imperative of basically phasing out our reliance on natural gas and shifting off a natural gas system as quickly as possible.”
Dickerson says there are other energy resources — like offshore wind, solar, batteries, and inter-regional transmission lines — that could help with reliability in the winter, when gas is used for heating and electricity.
“The clean energy alternatives that exist have never been more cost effective and more readily available, both for utilities to invest in, for customers to invest in, for states to invest in,” he said.
