Last week, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey held a press conference to address concerns around spiking utility bills. She touted growing wind and solar industries as crucial solutions to the affordability crisis, but also importing more fracked gas from out of state.
“We have gas pipeline expansion on the Algonquin—that’s good!” she said from her podium, referencing a $300 million project to beef up natural gas infrastructure in the state via Enbridge’s Algonquin Gas Transmission Pipeline. “We need to continue to find more ways to bring energy in, and anything around gas pipelines that works out well with the ratepayers and is consistent with our regulations we’ll welcome.”
Not long ago, this cozying up to fossil fuel in the state would have bewildered constituents of most political shades. After all, it was Republican Governor Charlie Baker who signed the 2021 law directing Massachusetts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, pivoting away from fossil fuels. One year later, Healey, then the state’s attorney general, bragged about sinking proposed pipeline expansion plans. “Remember,” she reminded her audience, “I stopped two gas pipelines from coming into this state.” (Governor Healey’s office didn’t respond to a list of questions sent over email.)
But in recent months, Healey’s tone has shifted. “With Trump’s second term, we are seeing a pivot to pro-pipeline policies from Northeast Democratic governors,” says Itai Vardi, a researcher at the Energy Policy Institute, a group that advocates for renewable energy. Alongside Healey, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont have also embraced natural gas, following years of focus on renewables to secure energy supplies and chasing zero-emissions goals set for 2050.
Healey has the Algonquin pipeline expansion in Massachusetts. Hochul recently permitted plans to expand the Williams NESE pipeline through New York Harbor and onto Long Island—after the project twice failed to gain required approvals from state environmental regulators. Despite local uproar, Governor Lamont supports building a compressor in the town of Brookfield, which would cram more gas through an existing pipeline.
One executive order Lamont signed in 2021 exemplifies the more pro-climate stance of the Biden years. “There is overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change,” the order reads. Natural gas was not just a contributor to emissions, it was also known to be uneconomical. “In light of recent price spikes for heating oil, propane, and natural gas and their negative impact on Connecticut consumers… [a new plan] is needed that identifies the best clean, affordable and resilient heating and cooling options for buildings.”
Hochul spokesperson Ken Lovett wrote in an email that with Trump’s second inauguration, “New York and clean energy states lost a critical partner, having gone from the previous federal administration that … supported the energy transition to a White House that is looking to do away with renewables in favor of a ‘drill baby drill’ strategy that favors natural gas and coal.”
Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut all began investing heavily in large offshore wind farm projects years ago—each able to provide around a gigawatt of clean, local energy to the grid. But over the last year, the Trump administration has sought to kill them through litigation and regulatory orders, most recently through a January work stoppage handed down by the Interior Department. While the offshore wind farms currently under construction have been allowed to continue after gaining injunctions in federal court, developers have canceled future wind projects, taking billions’ worth of energy investments with them. Questions of what will plug the gap they leave remain unanswered.
Meanwhile, energy costs continue to increase at the national level as the November gubernatorial and congressional midterm elections approach. The U.S. and Israel’s entanglements across the Middle East have also driven gas prices. As voters’ utility rates spike, all three governors have to convince voters that they’re worth keeping around.
As a result, these governors are now adopting policies that can coexist with Trump’s. That sometimes means co-opting them.
“Connecticut is committed to ensuring that our electric grid is reliable, resilient and that our energy costs become more affordable,” Rob Blanchard, director of communications for Lamont, wrote in a statement. “Offshore wind and other renewables are central to that effort, but it must be complemented by a diverse mix of resources, including nuclear power, natural gas, hydropower, and other technologies.… We will continue to engage with the federal government on shared energy priorities.”
Gas may be a political solution, but progressives don’t see a material one. “It’s not more affordable, it’s definitely not sustainable, and it may not even be attainable given supply chains,” says Samantha Dynowski, director of the Sierra Club in Connecticut.
Recent data from New York shows that natural gas prices have risen more rapidly than inflation, suggesting costs aren’t just following broader economic trends. In fact, those increases come not only from the price of gas but from a mix of additional charges, like capital investment in more gas infrastructure. According to the Future of Heat Initiative, “New York’s gas utilities are investing billions to excavate and replace old pipelines and install other infrastructure, often taking advantage of state policies that encourage such spending. Over the last 10 years, the six largest gas utilities grew their gas assets from $17B to over $37B, despite homes using less gas.”
The costs of building out those assets, one way or another, come from ratepayers. In 2024, about three-quarters of total gas costs for residents in New York came from “delivery,” which includes “pipes and other infrastructure, utility operating costs, and taxes,” rather than the gas itself. Contrast that to 1984, when less than half of total costs came from delivering the stuff.
The infrastructure currently being built, says Kim Fraczek, director of the Sane Energy Project in New York, will just drive rates higher still, since the building costs typically get passed onto the consumer. “One of the pinnacle tragedies of all of this,” she says, “is that Hochul is claiming to be on the side of affordability.”
But Hochul isn’t just changing gas policy in the name of affordability. Earlier this month, she voiced concern that state climate goals were “unrealistic.” Citing a report from NYSERA, the state utility regulator, the governor floated plans to soften state emissions targets. According to the report, New York families would pay thousands of dollars more per year in 2031 for the 2030 emissions target to be feasible.
But increasing gas usage will make these targets even harder to reach. “Going backwards on our climate law will set back decades of environmental work that’s been done leading up to this point, and decades into the future,” says Pete Harckham, a Democratic state senator and chairman of the New York state Senate’s Committee on Environmental Conservation. “The rub in all of this is the Hochul administration is trying to sell this as an affordability issue, that somehow the state’s climate law is responsible for high utility bills. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
When I asked Harckham what alternatives were available under the suboptimal conditions governors like Hochul were operating in, he pointed to a bill he introduced in the New York state legislature. Under the ASAP Act, the state’s flagship environmental bill—2019’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act—would be amended with more ambitious solar panel development goals. In 2024, New York accomplished the impressive feat of constructing six gigawatts’ worth of solar infrastructure—enough energy to power more than one million homes—one year ahead of schedule. Harckham’s bill would set sights on a new target: 20 GW by 2035.
To reach that goal, the bill would cut some regulations and create tighter timelines for utilities to get solar projects, which sometimes languish in the development stage, online. Harckham has a partner bill under consideration in the state Senate that would increase tax credits for solar, establishing consumer demand for residential solar.
“By streamlining the permitting and interconnection process, and strengthening programs that support solar installations, we can reduce project costs and deliver real savings to families, businesses, schools, and municipalities,” the state senator said in a statement last month. “That means more predictable energy bills and less exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices.”
As the governors lurch further to the right on energy policy, they’re also co-opting some conservative governors’ favorite energy language. “All of the above,” Lamont said on a local NBC News program last month, explaining the sources of energy he’s marshaling to cut electricity costs. Earlier this month in New York, Hochul said that “an all of the above approach” was necessary to address energy costs. Healey used this same phrase during her press conference last week: “My strategy is all of the above.”
The phrase “all of the above” is at least 25 years old. During the Obama years, the federal government leaned on the term as it embraced the fracking boom. Since the 2010s, it has faded from Democratic nomenclature as climate became a bigger-platform item.
For environmental advocates, the framing is little more than cover for policies that plainly contradict addressing climate change. “They call it ‘all of the above’; we call it more of the same,” says Dynowski. “We’re already overreliant on fracked methane gas. Adding more gas locks us into costly, polluting gas for decades to come. Truly diversifying our energy resources with clean renewable energy is what is needed.”
Meanwhile, red governors in places like Texas and Mississippi have made liberal use of the phrase. “All of the above” allowed someone like Texas Governor Greg Abbott to embrace the economic growth thousands of acres of wind turbines or solar panels could bring without alienating the fossil fuel industry or voters allergic to the smell of liberal-coded environmentalism.
Now liberal governors are adopting that politically palatable framing for their own purposes, and even praising red states’ approach. “Texas has the most renewables in the country,” Healey said during her press conference. “We have an opportunity to do that here. Especially with solar. That’s probably the quickest way to bring more energy online. That is the quickest and most affordable. I wanna get people’s rates down as quickly as possible.”
For now, and into the foreseeable future through new infrastructure projects like the Algonquin expansion, gas is coming along with it. The way a governor like Healey tells it, such investments are pragmatic choices during difficult times caused by chaotic national leadership. But environmental advocates, feeling sold out, see it differently. “It’s always best to burn somebody that your state doesn’t like too much,” says Cathy Kristofferson, co-founder of the Pipe Line Awareness Network for the North East, “rather than say, ‘We have failed you.’”
