Power plants take us down the wrong road

It wasn’t long ago natural gas was sold as the environmentally friendly choice.

The Malloy administration spent years pushing it as a cleaner, more affordable alternative to oil and coal, putting together a largescale plan to convert thousands of homeowners and businesses while overseeing the approval of new naturalgasfired power plants to replace dirtier, aging facilities.

Now nearly every part of those plans looks shortsighted. Not only did oil prices come down, leaving the cost savings questionable, but the environmental benefits of natural gas proved illusory. In the big picture, fossil fuels present a major problem no matter what form they take, and the longer we use them the longer we put off finding real solutions.

It’s part of a continuing trend. For a state with a reputation as environmentally friendly, and one that likes to complain about those dirty Midwestern power plants that pollute our pristine air, we are prolonging the changeover to a new energy future by spending huge amounts of money on new fossilfuel infrastructure.

Ned Lamont has continued in the footsteps of Dannel P. Malloy. Last week he signed an executive order that he said would advance Connecticut’s momentum on climate change, making sure to knock the federal government’s complete lack of interest in the problem. At the same time, though, Lamont and his team defended the state’s continuing push for new natural gas conversions along with a series of power plants that have recently opened, including in Oxford and Bridgeport, plus a recently approved plant in Killingly.

Displaying his trademark fuzziness on policy specifics, the governor is clinging to the Malloy line about natural gas serving as a “bridge” to the next generation of energy production. It’s better than coal and oil, according to this theory, and more reliable than solar or wind, so we’ll use it until we get where we need to go.

But that only works if it’s provable that natural gas has demonstrable benefits over existing power sources. If that was once an easy case to make, it isn’t anymore.

One big reason is called methane leakage. Methane is one of the most damaging greenhouse gases and it leaks from every step of the natural gas extraction, transportation and burning process, making it a virtual wash with dirtierburning fuels.

And according to a recent report, among the biggest problems is a predictable one — once new plants are built, they tend to operate for generations, spewing carbon into the atmosphere when we need to be making every effort to find alternatives.

If the past is any guide, the Oxford and Bridgeport plants will be contributing to our emissions troubles long after most people who read this are gone. “Given the barriers to closing down infrastructure ahead of its expected economic lifespan, it is critical to stop building new infrastructure,” reads the report from the think tank Oil Change International.

So why is Connecticut joining the natural gas building binge? Environmental advocates say the state is far too conservative in its estimates of what will be needed in the future as provided by ISONew England, the agency charged with ensuring the constant availability of electricity. ISO says retiring plants will leave the state in need of the new power sources, and the state Siting Council seems to agree.

The question then becomes whether there could be renewable options available to fill those gaps, and how that transition would happen. Solar and wind technology are improving quickly, but can’t yet meet all our needs.

Still, rather than build a naturalgasfired bridge that might take us generations into the future, we need solutions now, and barring that we’d be better off with older, somewhat dirtier plants that could be quickly shut down, rather than newer, stateoftheart facilities that will be a huge challenge to stop before their life expectancy is over.

Connecticut talks a good game about environmentalism and is better on policy than the federal government or many other states. That doesn’t mean it’s doing what it needs to do. If Connecticut is going to be part of the climate change solution, as Lamont says, it needs put an immediate stop to new natural gas infrastructure.

HUGH BAILEY