The Constitution gas pipeline won’t solve New England’s energy problems

Building a new natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania to New York would not make electricity in New England more affordable or reliable, experts say, despite the Trump administration’s push to revive a project that stalled out years ago.

Environmental advocates object to the construction of more gas infrastructure at a time when much of New England is trying to wean itself off fossil fuels, but there are economic concerns as well. Industry insiders say the proposed Constitution pipeline would do little to get more gas to New England power plants and could raise costs for both generators and consumers.

“There certainly is an increasing demand for energy, particularly electricity,” said Jeremy McDiarmid, managing director and general counsel for national industry group Advanced Energy United. ​“But the narrative that natural gas is going to somehow create a big downward pressure on electricity and energy bills is just not proven out in the data.”

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin breathed new life into that narrative in a Boston Globe op-ed published this month. The piece advocates for the approval of the Constitution pipeline, a proposed 125-mile project that would transport gas from the fracking fields of Pennsylvania into New York, on the grounds that it would save New Englanders money.

It’s the latest in the EPA’s shift away from its historical mission of safeguarding environmental and public health and toward slashing regulations with the goal of ​“unleashing American energy” and lowering costs for residents. Since President Donald Trump took office, the agency has announced plans to end the $7 billion Solar for All program that funds solar projects for low-income households, eliminate the Energy Star label for energy-efficient appliances, and strip itself of authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The Constitution pipeline is not a new project. Federal regulators initially approved it in 2014, but New York rejected the project’s water-quality certification in 2016. Legal battles ensued, and in 2020, energy development company Williams dropped the proposal.

Then, in May, the Trump administration lifted its stop-work order on a major offshore wind project under construction off Long Island’s coast, claiming the move was part of a deal in which New York’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul agreed to reverse the state’s long-standing opposition to natural gas pipelines. Days later, Williams declared it would resurrect plans for two pipelines: Constitution and the Northeast Supply Enhancement project, a shorter line that would mostly run underwater off New Jersey and New York.

In his Boston Globe piece, Zeldin traces New England’s soaring electricity prices — the highest of any region in the continental U.S. — back to an inadequate supply of natural gas to the area’s power plants. The Constitution pipeline would transport more gas into New York, where it could be exported to its neighbors to the East. More gas would mean more reliable power generation and lower electricity prices, Zeldin contends.

It has the ring of a plausible argument. New England’s power producers are heavily dependent on natural gas — 55% of the region’s electricity came from gas-fired plants in 2024 — and leadership at regional grid operator ISO New England has pointed to lack of gas supply as a concern for reliability as demand on the system grows. At the same time, the Trump administration’s hostility to offshore wind has slowed or sidelined several developments that states like Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts were counting on to boost power supplies in coming years.

“While there are a tremendous amount of ambitions around large-scale renewable energy, we have really struggled to make that operable,” said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association, a trade group that represents the region’s electricity producers.

Piping more gas up from Pennsylvania’s ample supplies could seem like an economically sensible way to bolster the grid in light of these facts. The reality is far more complicated, however, say advocates and experts.

The major problem is that the pipeline wouldn’t actually bring much, if any, new gas into New England, Dolan said. The Constitution pipeline would terminate in Schoharie County, New York, where it would connect to pipes that already carry gas into New England. That existing infrastructure is the true bottleneck, he said.

The pipes into and around New England are ​“narrow and limited,” so bringing a higher volume of gas into New York doesn’t mean more can flow throughout the neighboring region. There are no plans in the works to alleviate those constraints, and the models for funding such projects make it highly unlikely there will be any proposals for pipelines into or within New England in the near future, Dolan said.

“I am not aware of any large-scale gas supply projects into New England today,” he said. ​“Until there is a way to increase that, I struggle to see how Constitution changes anything meaningful for us.”

Furthermore, multiple New England states are enacting plans to transition away from natural gas for home heating and appliances. In late 2023, Massachusetts regulators laid out plans for transitioning gas utilities toward clean energy, with the explicit goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. In May 2025, Maine opened an investigation into the future of its gas utilities. These efforts could reduce demand for natural gas for heating, freeing up some supply for power plants, Dolan said.

Even if new pipelines increased New England’s gas supply, that influx of fuel would be unlikely to consistently lower prices in the long term, experts said. Despite the appealing logic that more supply leads to lower costs, natural gas prices are inherently volatile and susceptible to influence by global events. In 2022, for example, the wholesale price more than tripled from its 2020 level, hitting $6.45 per million British thermal units, after Russia invaded Ukraine. Last year, the average price was $2.20; next year it is forecast to hit $4.30, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“The region is already over-reliant on natural gas,” said Sarah Krame, staff attorney with the Sierra Club’s environmental law program. ​“That is why we have seen volatile and skyrocketing gas and electricity bills in recent years.”

A better solution to both price and reliability worries, said advocates, would be to build a system that simply requires less gas.

That would mean relying on a diverse portfolio of options that includes solar, offshore wind, battery storage, energy efficiency, and demand-response programs. Such resources could be coordinated to create virtual power plants — a collection of geographically distributed resources that can work together to supply power to the grid and reduce demand. Not only do these networks emit less greenhouse gases than fossil-fueled plants, but their components can be built more quickly and cheaply, McDiarmid said.

This approach already had a chance to prove itself this summer, when solar and storage worked together to lower peak demand during a heat wave that saw temperatures hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit around the region, noted Amy Boyd Rabin, vice president of policy and regulatory affairs at the Environmental League of Massachusetts.

“To me that’s a sign that we need more renewables, not that we need to double down on fossil fuels,” she said.