Doug Burgum, the U.S. Department of Interior secretary, said the quiet part out loud. It was a few days before Christmas, an hour or two after he had announced that five offshore wind projects under construction — including Connecticut’s Revolution Wind — was being halted “due to nation al security risks identified by the Department of War in recently completed classified reports.”  Burgum told Fox News another story: “We have a solution in New England right there, which is natural gas from Pennsylvania, which would generate power five to 10 times more than all these … five projects put together.” Natural gas. In some circles it’s viewed as the holy grail of power supply. In others it is one of the worst climate change nightmares imaginable. And then there’s pretty much everything in between. The U.S. produces more natural gas than any other nation. It also exports more. The Trump administration has clearly said it wants to do more of both. That was a pillar of President Donald Trump’s day one executive order, Unleashing American Energy, which put renewables like wind and solar on notice while creating a glide path for extracting and marketing more fossil fuels. The general public has many mistaken notions about natural gas. That it is clean. That it will lower energy prices. Even that it occurs as a liquid like oil. And for sure that it is a panacea. The misconceptions about natural gas extend to its economics and its politics. But they start with what it actually is, beginning with its name. What’s in a name Natural gas was given that name more than a century ago to differentiate it from the prevalent form of gas at the time, which was manufactured from coal. That gas was known as coal gas, town gas, coke gas, manufactured gas — among other names. Natural gas, most often found alongside oil, came out of the ground as gas — so it was called “natural.” It came into wide use after World War II. These days, some environmental advocates want to change the name to highlight its main component — methane. “Typically I don’t call it natural gas,” said Deborah Gordon a senior principal at the energy think tank RMI, where she leads the oil and gas solutions initiative within the Climate Intelligence Program. She is an engineer with a deep background in energy and has written specifically on the myths and realities of natural gas.   Underground, Gordon said, natural gas is anywhere from 60% to 90% methane. After it’s processed, the natural gas delivered via pipeline to New England is closer to 90% or more methane, she said. Gordon is among many who point out that methane is a potent greenhouse gas. And the problems start well before it is burned as a fuel. The biggest of the problems is methane leaks into the atmosphere, Gordon and others say. In the first 20 years after it is released, methane has more than 80 times the heat-trapping capacity of carbon dioxide, CO2, which is the most abundant greenhouse gas. After that, methane turns into carbon dioxide, at which point it adds to the long-term heat trapping and greenhouse gas buildup CO2 creates — some of which can last thousands of years. The 2025 Global Methane Tracker report released in May by the International Energy Agency, IEA, stated: “Methane is responsible for around 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, and rapid and sustained reductions in methane emissions are key to limiting near-term global warming and improving air quality.” “The way we often talk about it is, CO2 building up in the atmosphere tells you how much warming the planet is ultimately going to experience over generations,” said Mark Brownstein, senior vice president of energy transition at the Environmental Defense Fund, EDF. He previously worked for the electric and gas utility PSEG, which at one time owned the Bridgeport Harbor power plant. “Methane in the atmosphere tells you something important about how fast the rate of increase is going to be,” he said. “Reducing methane from the oil and gas industry is the most immediate, impactful and cost-effective thing that we can do to slow the rate of climate change.” Methane leaks when the gas is extracted, when it moves through pipelines and at many other points as it’s distributed to heat homes, pumped into power plants to generate electricity or super-cooled to convert it to liquefied natural gas for transport overseas by tanker. Peter Raymond, a professor at the Yale School of the Environment who studies and measures global methane, said the biggest source of leaks is from waste — landfills and wastewater treatment facilities. Close behind are the natural gas leaks. Much farther behind is agricultural methane — mainly produced by ruminants, mostly cows. “The biggest leak is in exploration,” Raymond said of natural gas leakage. “There’s considerable leaks in the distribution system that you can map and find. There’s efficiency to gain along the whole supply chain,” he said. “Basically you don’t want it in the atmosphere at all because it has this very high potency over its short lifetime. Stopping it from leaking immediately stops that warming immediately,” said RMI’s Gordon. “CO2 builds up very slowly over time, and so stopping CO2 today, which we want to do, won’t remove all that has been built up over the last 100 years in the planet.” Natural gas also contains standard pollutants — and those can leak, too. Gordon said they’re a mixture of everything the gas touched while it was underground, plus the volatile organic compounds methane, ethane, propane and butane. All of it can also contribute to smog. “The whole thing is a combination of air pollution and greenhouse gas,” she said. “If the air pollution was your only issue, [gas] in fact would be a better choice than coal or oil, and it is less carbon intensive than coal or oil. So over the long term, it does have some marginal benefits relative to either one of those fuels. But when there are leaks, it does have this profound impact in the near term.” The extent of methane leaks from natural gas and its other sources also reflects local regulatory controls, including containment systems to minimize leaks and protocols to find and fix them. Brownstein at EDF said extraction around the Marcellus Shale — the area in the Appalachian Basin that extends through Pennsylvania into New York — has better controls than the Permian Basin, which is largely in west Texas. He said a recent EDF report showed that emissions on the New Mexico side of the Permian Basin are half of what they are in Texas. “And why is that?” he said. “Because New Mexico has a regulatory framework in place that requires companies to manage their methane emissions, whereas in Texas, they don’t. “The first question that I would have for anybody championing natural gas coming into Connecticut is, what has the state of Connecticut done to make sure that the methane emissions are managed well within the border?” he said. “And two, what is it that suppliers bringing gas into Connecticut should be doing to manage the methane footprint of the gas that they’re selling into the region?” The American Gas Association, which says it represents more than 200 local energy delivery companies, claims on its website that “emissions from natural gas distribution systems have dropped 70% since 1990,” though it does not specify which emissions. The site also lists among its commitments to “further reduce methane emissions from natural gas utility systems,” and it notes that AGA has put in place a reporting system for companies to document methane reduction actions. It also states that natural gas is “clean.” AGA did not respond to questions about its actions or whether it supported the Trump administration delay of stricter methane emission standards. Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, DEEP, has a pipeline safety group that monitors and manages leaks. The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority regulates the gas distribution system within the state. But all Connecticut’s gas comes from outside its borders, and that interstate movement is overseen by federal entities. “We don’t have jurisdiction to regulate those activities,” DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes said. Producers, she said, have been better about stemming leaks at the wellheads and production facilities. Lost gas is also lost money for them. DEEP tracks methane emissions in its annual Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory, which monitors the state’s progress towards its emissions goal. “While Connecticut has reduced fugitive emissions from older gas infrastructure by replacing older cast iron gas lines with newer PVC distribution lines, fugitive emissions have risen imperceptibly since the previous year,” its most recent report, released in September, stated. Connecticut does not include the emissions that occur in the production of gas that eventually comes into the state. “This inventory does not capture the full effect of methane leaks into the atmosphere from the natural gas distribution system because natural gas consumed in Connecticut is produced and stored out of state,” the report also stated. New York, California and Washington do include that in their inventories. “I think what keeps us up the most [at night] is that policymakers seem to be still reaching for gas as a solution for affordability, despite how much has changed to the contrary about the affordability of gas in the last 10 years,” said Jamie Dickerson, senior director of clean energy and climate programs at Acadia Center, a regional advocacy group for clean energy and climate change solutions. He said even though the climate concern is still there, “we still are very concerned that natural gas would actually have an upward impact on energy prices and exacerbate the current affordability dynamics in the region.” The counter-intuitive economics of natural gas In certain policy circles, there has been no shortage of discussion, news stories and market analysis about the economics of Trump’s push for more U.S.-produced natural gas. And they all get at a similar idea — as gas production increases, so will the price for U.S. consumers. That may sound counterintuitive. There are good reasons for it, though. One is that even if all the gas was destined to be used in the U.S., producers would still need to drill, produce and transport it. Who would pay for that, including new pipelines and all the other construction components? U.S. consumers. But a lot of the gas is not destined for use here. Much of the Trump administration’s motive for boosting production is to sell it to other countries — especially European countries trying to stop using Russian gas. They’ve been willing to pay relatively high prices, which gas producers certainly like. If U.S. buyers want some of that gas, in order to be competitive they would to have to match those European prices. Even if you strip out the costs of liquefying it and transporting it to Europe, U.S. buyers would still face higher prices for natural gas, which seems to leave them stuck between a rock and a hard place. The most recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, EIA, shows how stark that price increase was in 2025 alone, despite an increase in gas production. Last year, the average wholesale spot price for the benchmark Henry Hub in Louisiana increased by 56% compared to 2024, when prices hit the lowest on record when adjusted for inflation. (Prices tend to be higher in winter than summer when gas is used for both electricity and heat.) The average prices for the two hubs used by the Northeast — one in Boston and one in New York — doubled over that same period. According to an analysis of EIA data done by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, there were record exports of natural gas — mainly as LNG — over the course of the first nine months of the Trump administration. They went up 22%. Costs for natural gas consumers also went up 22%. January data from EIA predicts the benchmark natural gas price will decline in the beginning of this year, before rising sharply into 2027. Michael Oristaglio, senior research scientist and lecturer in earth and planetary sciences at Yale University, and former director of the university’s energy studies program, said that could leave the oil industry in a bind. Since oil and gas often are a two-for-one drilling proposition — with oil prices too low for companies to want to invest and oil demand declining as well — drilling for more gas could go down with the oil ship. “That is the issue in the Permian Basin,” he said. “The Marcellus is a little different. It’s one of the only shale formations that just produces natural gas.” Compromising the ability to build new gas infrastructure is a shortage of natural gas turbines that is predicted to last until 2030. And even if the infrastructure could get built, tariffs might raise the cost — again, something that consumers would likely have to bear. Even so, Connecticut is not ruling out a tilt back to natural gas use, despite years-long efforts to pivot away. Dykes said DEEP is researching the many factors around fossil fuel use, including the critical cost-benefit analysis, as it develops its next Integrated Resource Plan, IRP, which assesses future electric needs. While she noted that the cost of electricity is highly sensitive to the delivered price of natural gas in New England, she also referenced the marching orders from her boss. “Gov. Lamont has been speaking for more than a year now about the importance of considering all energy options as a part of an all-of-the-above approach. And he’s been very interested in understanding what the potential benefits might be of expanding gas access, particularly to help make energy costs more affordable and make the grid more reliable,” she said. At the opposite end, Dykes has to factor in how to meet the state’s decarbonization goals and mandates. She pointed to additional gas as a potential counter-balance to renewable power that may not be available 100% of the time. But she admitted that trying to weigh the many sudden moves by the Trump administration — such as the second shutdown and now court-ordered restart of construction on Revolution Wind — can make that process daunting. “I think the only thing that anyone really can say with certainty is that the list of uncertainties continues to grow,” Dykes said. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t relieve us of the necessity of making some decisions and making some investments, with the best information we can, to help ensure that we have a reliable and affordable grid that can meet the long term policy goals that the legislature has set here in Connecticut.” Brad Campbell, president of the New England-based Conservation Law Foundation, CLF, and a former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator, said that the conventional wisdom for many years was that if you wanted to lower electricity prices in New England, all you had to do was build more infrastructure to get more gas in. But he said that’s a misconception. “Building more pipes isn’t going to reduce prices for New Englanders when the price of the commodity going into the pipe is going higher and higher,” he said. “Running another pipe — the gas industry expects that to be borne on the backs of ratepayers.” Brownstein of EDF also pointed out that gas, unlike renewables such as wind and solar, comes with the ongoing cost of having to pay for every unit that’s consumed. “When you say that a new gas pipeline will be run into New England, or you say that New England will build a whole bunch of new gas plants, ultimately you will pay for that every time you turn on your lights, and every time you turn on your stove,” he said. “It’s very nice for the Trump administration to say that you need all this and you should want it. It’s another thing to say to a homeowner in Connecticut, ‘Guess what you’re going to have to pay for.”’ Brownstein said in recent travels to Europe, he heard worries about the continent becoming too dependent on U.S. gas — namely, if energy prices begin to rise in the U.S., would the Trump administration restrict exports in order to keep energy prices in the U.S. low? “They see that simply replacing their dependence on Russian gas for dependence on American gas may not be a smart bet either, particularly as the United States has become a less predictable ally,” Brownstein said. Add to that the current dispute the U.S has with new E.U. regulations for monitoring and tightening methane emissions on oil and gas coming into the E.U. beginning next year. The U.S. has asked for an exemption. It’s unclear how that could play out — but it could push prices higher. And there are also questions about how to move forward with existing gas infrastructure. Spend the money to repair it when needed? Replace it if necessary? Even expand it? “We’re not doing the right cost-benefit analysis to determine where the public should be putting its money,” said Noah Berman, senior policy advocate and utility innovation program manager at Acadia Center. That’s where politics comes in. The politics of natural gas in the age of Trump Connecticut has had its own love-hate political relationship with gas over the last 15 or so years. In 2013, in the state’s first Comprehensive Energy Strategy — developed by the then-new Department of Energy and Environmental Protection — converting to natural gas was a go-to strategy. Its key goal was to take advantage of cheap prices from the fracking boom to convert more than 300,000 homes and businesses from oil to natural gas heat. Gas was touted as cleaner and a bridge fuel from oil to renewables. Climate advocates were incensed, predicting it would entrench gas for a generation or more. There were also concerns about the lack of pipeline capacity and the cost of building out infrastructure to distribute gas to homes. While the policy stayed in place for years, the goals were never reached and it quietly vanished as the focus turned to electrification through heat pumps, rooftop solar and storage. But much of the region did not look kindly on more gas lines or plants. A study done in Massachusetts 10 years ago found that more gas lines weren’t needed until at least 2030. While some gas generation was built, and oil-burning plants converted to gas, local opposition contributed to stopping others — including a plant planned in Killingly. Protestors outside the Capitol in 2019 opposing the Killingly power plant project. Credit: Photo courtesy of Not Another Power Plant New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine are, to varying degrees, exploring what are referred to as “future of gas” policies — ways to wean states off using natural gas, from very gentle pushes towards heat pumps to strict rules barring new gas hookups for homes and businesses. But with Trump’s pro-fossil fuel and anti-renewables policies in place, New York has delayed implementation of its gas bans that would have started on Jan. 1. The state’s governor, Kathy Hochul, is now considering allowing a gas pipeline to be built after years of opposing it. The concession is said to have been the price for restarting Empire Wind construction after the first time Trump ordered it stopped earlier in 2025, though Hochul claims that is not the case. (The project was one of those recently stopped again.) Massachusetts has recently made moves towards backing off some its climate goals — though a longstanding ruling, which keeps utilities from charging customers for new gas lines, remains in place. Connecticut has been on the sidelines for much of this — especially cutting back on gas use. Legislation that has promoted future of gas evaluations has failed more than once in recent years, and EIA data shows that gas consumption in the state is rising. “Connecticut is an outlier on gas consumption rates among the rest of the region,” said Acadia’s Dickerson. “If you isolate just Connecticut, the rest of New England is actually flat or declining gas consumption over the past five to 10 years.” Acadia supports consideration of non-pipeline solutions — like promoting heat pumps, solar or geothermal energy — to avoid recommitting to natural gas when existing infrastructure has reached the end of its useful life or has safety issues. The Trump administration has been steadily endeavoring to peel away safeguards against greenhouse gases as well as standard emissions of all sorts. It’s keeping coal plants open past their planned shutdowns. And the administration is close to rolling back more restrictive Biden administration standards for mercury and carbon emissions. For methane specifically, it has delayed until 2034 stricter emission standards also put in place by the Biden administration. A number of groups, including EDF, are challenging that in court. “There’s no question that the Trump administration is working to put a thumb on the scale of oil and gas,” said Brownstein of EDF. “Doubling down on natural gas exacerbates a methane problem that they’re taking no action to solve, and, in fact, undoing work that the previous administration did that actually would have made a material difference.” An open question is whether the Trump administration — through its energy emergency executive order, or any other energy actions including quid pro quos to restart offshore wind and other projects — will be able to force natural gas into or through a state that doesn’t want it. On Jan. 13, the EPA announced a proposed rule to limit states’ ability under the Clean Water Act to deny federal permits for infrastructure like gas pipelines if the state feels they pose a hazard to water bodies. It follows a proposed rule issued in November that would remove federal pollution protections from many inland waters and most wetlands. “They are absolutely trying to override state authority. And their theory is that anything states do that burdens the oil and gas industry — anything that burdens big oil and big gas — should be overridden because it interferes with the President’s authority in declaring the energy emergency,” Campbell at CLF said. “I think at the end of the day, the political pressure on governors to deliver on an affordability agenda is going to drive the same changes in policy, the same changes in the utility model and utility practice that we need to decarbonize the grid,” Campbell said. “But the one thing that seems certain is that deepening our addiction to natural gas for heat and electricity is going to only going to take us in a less affordable direction.” ...read more read less