Summer Heat Exposes Cracks in New England’s Energy Grid
This week’s heatwave exposed the fragility of New England’s energy infrastructure.
On Tuesday, as Boston hit 101 degrees, more than 11,000 residents across Massachusetts lost power. In towns like Middleborough, the lights and air conditioning went out during the peak of the heat, forcing local officials to open emergency cooling centers to protect vulnerable residents. These were not isolated incidents; they were symptoms of a grid pushed to its limits.
Behind the scenes, New England’s grid operator, ISO-NE, issued an Energy Emergency Alert after an unexpected loss in power generation. While the power eventually came back, the deeper problem hasn’t gone away.
New England lacks the energy infrastructure to meet the growing demands of a modern, electrified economy. On hot summer days and cold winter nights, the region’s grid operators routinely face tight margins. One of the key reasons is that we lack sufficient access to reliable, dispatchable energy, particularly natural gas.
Despite being just a few hundred miles from the Marcellus Shale, one of the world’s largest natural gas supplies, New England remains cut off from affordable fuel that could stabilize the grid and prevent outages like those seen this week. That’s because efforts to build a new natural gas pipeline into the region have been stalled for years by regulatory roadblocks and political resistance.
It’s time for that to change.
The events of this week should serve as a wake-up call. Blackouts during the summer, which are preventable with reliable energy sources, pose a threat to public health and safety.
New England needs a resilient energy system. That means reinforcing the grid, investing in reliable energy sources, and finally moving forward with the natural gas pipeline projects that have been stalled for too long.
Because no one should be left in the dark when the stakes are this high.
June 25, 2025