For years natural gas, mostly aka methane, has been a big-time climate-alarmist villain. Some scary multiple of the potency of CO2, a “a super-potent greenhouse gas” worse than coal, seeping disaster on every side, it must be found and stopped, in stoves, furnaces, industrial processes and landfills, though not hydro dams. To hear zealots tell it, the stuff kills us dead any number of ways from heat domes to leukemia. Until suddenly it’s our best friend, as in Massachusetts where the governor wants it cheap and plentiful, and carbon pricing be hanged. The same carbon pricing she long advocated and that advocates there and elsewhere praise. Then winter came. Oops.

According to the Boston Herald:

“In the face of rising utility costs and stubborn inflationary pressures, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey is calling on the Department of Public Utilities to take immediate action to bring energy prices down. Bay State families are struggling to handle an ‘unexpected rate hike’ that has sent their natural gas bills through the roof, and according to Healey it comes as they were already dealing with increased costs for groceries, gasoline, and other everyday goods. The governor says that she is ‘deeply troubled’ by what she’s hearing.”

Jolly decent of her. The British government should try it.

And in a way it is. Thus:

“Domestic energy prices are forecast to rise by 5% from April, adding £85 a year to household bills, according to consultancy Cornwall Insight. The forecaster, which is widely regarded for its accurate predictions, said a household using a typical amount of gas and electricity would pay £1,823 a year. The figures emerged as Energy Secretary Ed Miliband wrote an urgent letter to Ofgem, the regulator which sets the price cap, asking it to move quickly to protect consumers. The predicted higher prices will take effect at the same time as increases to water and council tax bills in April.”

Uh, that’d be “Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero” Ed Miliband, to get all technical. But the Net Zero part is quietly omitted by the BBC when the problem is that energy prices are soaring due to his commitment to Net Zero, and that of his Tory predecessors who in a sparkling display of non-partisanship all banded together behind a disastrous policy.

The UK has been shutting down fossil fuel plants, and primary sources, abandoning nuclear, and betting the farm on wind and solar, literally in fact as they’ve been using up precious agricultural land to host these monstrosities. And look what happened: they now have among the most expensive electricity in the world, and a crisis in natural gas cost and availability.

In Bloomberg’s version:

“Volatile wholesale markets for both gas and power mean the Labour government is struggling to reverse the price increases that took place during the energy crisis that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Recent cold snaps and concerns about depleting gas inventories in Europe played a large part in the latest hike.”

Recent cold snaps. That’s one way of describing prolonged cold weather lasting months. And a misleading one because snaps are by definition short. Another one is that winter didn’t end the way the zealots said it would while ensuring that if they were wrong on that one, their errors in other fields would cause widespread misery.

Even the Guardian half gets it:

“Although a further rise was widely expected, the increase is expected to be steeper than first anticipated after cold, still weather across Europe forced many countries to rely more heavily on gas power plants as wind power dwindled. As a result gas storage levels dropped across the continent, causing wholesale market prices to rise sharply.”

But only half, as the story also issues a ringing call for all hands on fantasy:

“Adam Scorer, the chief executive of National Energy Action, a fuel poverty charity, said the third consecutive price cap rise would hit households ‘after three years of abnormally high energy bills’. ‘There is no getting used to this new normal for the people we try to help. Millions of the most vulnerable households are struggling with debt and severely rationing their heating,’ he said.”

OK. But here’s the thing. Those abnormally high bills have two sources. One is deliberately increasing the cost of conventional fuels so people will use less of them and the other is fantastically underestimating the cost and overestimating the productivity of alternatives that people can’t use because they didn’t deliver.

This Britain being, of course, the same one in which the same Labour politicians were singing a very different and much more insouciant tune in May 2024:

“Labour says GB Energy will fix cost-of-living crisis with clean power/ Sir Keir Starmer says proposed publicly owned company will provide lower bills and energy security”.

It didn’t work.

So how exactly is Ofgem meant to fix the problem? If you set prices below the cost of production, the stuff just doesn’t get made. If you set them above it, and try to bring them down through subsidies, the same people currently reeling from both energy prices and taxes have to pay more in taxes to pay less in energy prices because (all together now) there is no free lunch. Of course you could go back to what works. But it’s not the sort of thing politicians are good at.

Thus back in Massachusetts:

“The governor took the occasion to remind Bay State ratepayers that while the cold weather lasts the law protects them from seeing their heat turned off, no matter how much their bills might be.”

So you can keep using energy you can’t afford until um uh you go broke, the utilities do, the state does or all three. Or until someone gets a clue about energy policy that produces energy. Healey has of course impeccable progressive credentials, from identity politics to abortion to gun control. Her “Maura Healey for Massachusetts” site still declares, two years after she won the election, that:

“Maura has the experience, vision, and know-how to lead Massachusetts through the clean energy transition and to deliver on the promise of the opportunities presented. This is our chance to create good-paying jobs, protect our communities, and address environmental injustices that have existed for far too long. The climate crisis is our greatest risk and our greatest opportunity. Our choice is clear: to protect our families, communities, and the environment that sustains us, we must rapidly transition to clean energy. As Governor, Maura will make climate change a top priority. She understands the critical urgency of this issue and she knows what is at stake – especially for the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable communities.”

But she didn’t, did she? She had no idea what was at stake for vulnerable communities if the state botched its energy policy by betting heavily on alternatives and pillorying natural gas. She had no idea what would happen if the Commonwealth (yes, Massachusetts is one) threw billions at trendy new ideas instead of proven resources.

Or rather, she had a completely stupid idea back in the summer when it was warm:

“Governor Healey has aimed to make Massachusetts a global leader in climatetech [sic] through a $1 billion investment in her Mass Leads Act. A UMass Donahue Institute analysis found the proposal could generate $16.4 billion in economic activity – representing a 12-to-1 return on investment – and create 6,670 new jobs.”

A 12-to-1 return? Not even snake oil offers that prospect. But on the left all utilities can be maximized simultaneously (except the utilities that produce power) so as recently as November you can’t believe how it was all coming together perfectly:

“Governor Healey Signs Climate Law to Advance Clean Energy Transition, Create Jobs and Lower Costs/ Historic reforms to how clean energy is permitted will accelerate progress toward climate goals and ensure siting is informed by environmental justice/ Governor Maura Healey signed into law An Act promoting a clean energy grid, advancing equity, and protecting ratepayers. This legislation will accelerate clean energy development, improve energy affordability, create an equitable infrastructure siting process, allow for multistate clean energy procurements, promote non-gas heating, expand access to electric vehicles and create jobs and support workers throughout the energy transition.”

And after lunch, world peace. Or just unaffordable energy and political panic over those magical “lower costs”, equity, supporting workers and um did you say “promote non-gas heating”? How? By making the gas kind unaffordable and the other kind unavailable?

Someone has blundered.