Get Ready for the New England Power Shortage

...during the first four months of last winter, New England spent $5.1 billion on electricity. In the whole of 2012, it had spent only $5.2 billion.

If you only read one energy article this week, it should probably be this one, by William Tucker.

Get Ready for the New England Power Shortage | The American Spectator:

In 1980, under the first administration of Governor Jerry Brown, California decided it wasn’t going to build any more power plants but would follow Amory Lovins’ “soft path,” opting instead for conservation and renewable energy. By 2000, with the new digital economy sucking up electricity, a drought in the Pacific Northwest cut hydropower output and the state found itself facing the Great California Electrical Shortage."
You know what happened next. For weeks the Golden State struggled to find enough electricity to power its traffic lights. Brownouts and blackouts cascaded across the state while businesses fired up smoke-belching diesel generators to keep the lights on. Governor Gray Davis finally got booted out of office but the state didn’t rescue itself until it threw up 12,000 megawatts of new natural gas plants.
At that point California officials decided that the whole thing had been engineered by Enron and other out-of-state merchant providers and the charges and lawsuits flew. No Democrat ever learned a lesson. The state is now 60 percent dependent on natural gas for its electricity — twice the national average — and its electric bills are almost twice that of surrounding states. Industry is headed for the door.
So how have California’s liberal counterparts on the East Coast managed to avoid the same fate? You’d think a region that could produce Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders plus legions of college students trained to hate fossil fuels would have no trouble pursuing the same green dreams. Well, it’s about to happen. In the next few years New England will be facing a full-scale power shortage.

Just go on reading the article at The American Spectator.

Also current and of interest:

The New York Times continues what seems to me a recent return to reporting with Corralling Carbon Before It Belches From Stack.  The article doesn't provide a lot new over what has been cited here before (Bleak outlooks on Bio-energy and CCS).
For more on Canada's regulations you could read my Canada's ENGO's Offensive Response to New Regulations for coal-fired generators - which won't be out of context following Tucker's American Spectator piece.