These days, New England operates on natural gas. We heat with it and generate about half our electricity with it; any other option is more expensive. But we don’t want more pipelines bringing it into the region and would like to do without fossil fuels entirely, so we’re conflicted about the whole thing.
Don Maurice Kreis, the consumer advocate for New Hampshire (his job is to represent rate-payers when regulators rule on proposals from regulated utilities like gas companies) wrote about the issue in a weekly column he produces for InDepthNH, an indepdent state news service started by former Union-Leader reporter Nancy West. It’s worth a read if you want to get a sense of how complex this can be: Read it here.