In October, the U.S. Energy Information Administration announced that the average price paid by households in the Northeast this winter for heating oil may be the highest ever, “almost $27 per MMBtu ($3.71 per gallon) or more than double the projected average cost of natural gas ($12.93 per MMBtu) delivered to households in the Northeast.” As the winter months begin to take their hold, rising costs are placing Maine’s residents at risk. Despite this threat, Maine and the remaining Northeast States Coordinated for Air Use Management (NESCAUM) members have plans to implement a costly low carbon fuel standard (LCFS), a program which will drastically decrease available heating oil imports and drive costs through the frozen roof.
A study conducted by IHS CERA on NESCAUM’s latest senario analysis of an LCFS found that the economic analysis undertaken was “critically flawed” and overly-optimistic. Not only will the cost for fuel sky-rocket, there will not be enough qualifying low-carbon fuel to sustain the population’s needs. With the highest share of households in the nation using fuel oil for winter space heating, Maine cannot afford to implement an LCFS. With no fossil fuel reserves of its own, Maine relies on Canada for 60% of its petroleum imports. Home heating oil is no different. Not only would an LCFS drastically reduce the amount of Canadian fuel oil available to the state, fuel costs will skyrocket as demand for limited fuel sources such as biofuels increases. As IHS CERA confirms in their report, these fuels are not produced commercially today and have been consistently more expansive than petroleum diesel for years.
A recent article in the New York Times, Federal Cuts Give Maine a Chill as Winter Approaches November 27, 2011, unveils the unfortunate reality that is already plaguing northeastern states—increasing home highlighted heating oil prices. An LCFS will only do more harm:
“ Michele Hodges works six days a week but still cannot afford a Maine winter’s worth of heat for her trailer in Corinth, a tiny town where snowmobiles can outnumber cars. Ms. Hodges and her two teenage daughters qualified for federal heating assistance last year, but their luck might have run out. President Obama has proposed sharply cutting the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and Maine is at this point expecting less than half of the $55.6 million that it received last winter, even as more people are applying.”
“ At Penquis, a nonprofit agency in Bangor where people can apply for federal heating aid, more than 9,000 households have done so since August, said Melanie Hurlburt, a division manager there…’Clients are calling me back when they get the benefit and saying, ‘What am I going to do?’ Ms. Hurlburt said. ‘I hear a lot of reports about what temperature they plan to keep their homes at, and I’m amazed — you know, 50 degrees. You’re barely above keeping your pipes from freezing.’ In Bangor, the average low in January is seven degrees.”
For the time being, some of Maine’s wealthier residents such as novelist Stephen King, who grew up in a trailer home just miles away from where he now resides, are trying to do their part to help those in need.
“Everybody is just hurting, and everybody is scared,” Mr. King said in an interview last week. “If we took everything we had and tossed it into the pot, it still wouldn’t make much of a difference.” Still, he said, “There was no question of not helping when we saw how much the cut was.”
But for now, most Mainers are forced to push through and make do. We cannot place these people at any greater risk.
“Robert Ketch, 72,…said he lived on a monthly Social Security check of about $900. Mr. Ketch said that if turned down for assistance, he would survive the winter by doing what many a Mainer before him has. ‘Tough through it,’ he said.”
Maine’s reliance on Canadian energy imports both for the purposes of fueling vehicles and warming houses renders the state among the most vulnerable to the price and supply disruption that an LCFS would cause.
For a state that is already struggling to make the through the winter months, implementing an LCFS would be detrimental to the health and survival of these northeast communities.
