Climate Reality Hits Nantucket

World leaders are meeting this week in Brazil for the United Nations’ COP30 climate summit. Looking past the cocktail parties and private jets, the big news this year is how governments are walking back climate goals they made years ago. For an example closer to home, see Massachusetts.

Bay State Democrats in 2021 passed a law requiring their government to adopt policies and emissions limits to reduce its CO2 emissions to 50% below 1990 levels by 2030. Those were the days of peak climate. Banks and asset managers were pledging to go “net zero,” and Democrats in Washington were advancing a multitude of policies to banish fossil fuels.

But energy reality has dawned even on Nantucket, as the high cost of the state’s climate policies has arrived. About 80% of Massachusetts’s electricity is generated by natural gas, and about half of households also rely on gas for heating.

Pipeline constraints and the 1920 Jones Act mean the state must import liquefied natural gas from abroad at high prices during the winter.

Massachusetts’s wholesale gas prices are 239% of the national average, and its residential electricity rates are 72% higher than in the rest of the country.

Democratic ambitions to power their grid with renewable energy have hit the rocks amid rising costs after the GOP tax bill phased out tax credits for solar and wind projects that can offset 50% of their cost. The tax bill also ended subsidies for electric vehicles and rooftop solar. All of this has some Democrats rethinking the political risks of continuing with their 2021 emissions fantasy, er, law.

Democratic state Rep. Mark Cusack told the CommonWealth Beacon news site that he planned to advance legislation that would make the state’s 2030 emissions target “advisory in nature and unenforceable” and postpone the state’s statutory deadlines for expanding off-shore wind. “The number one goal is to save money and adjust to the reality with clean energy,” he said.

Naturally, he also blamed President Trump for forcing the state to come to terms with this reality. But he should be thanking Mr. Trump for saving him and his fellow Democrats from the wrath of voters who would have to live under, and pay for, his tilting at windmills.

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