HERE’S SOMETHING you probably didn’t have on your bingo card: The Democratic governor of Massachusetts asking President Trump’s administration to move faster in approving a gas expansion project.
That’s exactly what Gov. Maura Healey did on Thursday, imploring Energy Secretary Chris Wright in a letter to move with a “sense of urgency” in issuing required permits for the project to quickly move forward.
Healey, citing her “all of the above” approach to energy issues, previously expressed support for the proposal, a relatively small expansion of 73,500 dekatherms per day of an existing gas pipeline owned by Canadian energy company Enbridge. State regulators approved contracts earlier this year for Eversource to purchase the additional gas from the expansion project, known as the Reliable Affordable Resilient Enhancement, or RARE.
But now, as Healey hunts for ways to bring down soaring gas and electric costs and campaigns for reelection in a race defined by the affordability crisis gripping the state, the governor sees an opportunity to appeal to the fossil fuel-friendly Trump administration to bring more natural gas into the state to both power and heat homes and businesses.
What’s more, Healey said that she and Wright have “on several occasions” discussed their “mutual desire” to bring more gas into New England.
“I ask that you work across the Administration to ensure that the federal reviews and permits needed for RARE move without delay; that agencies establish clear schedules and coordinate their work wherever legally permissible; and that sufficient staff and resources are dedicated to completing the required reviews in time to preserve the project’s planned 2028 in-service date,” Healey wrote to Wright.
The overture from Healey is noteworthy, too, because of how critical she has been of the Trump administration for raising energy costs by canceling new offshore wind projects and launching hostilities in the Middle East that have sent oil prices surging.
In this case, Healey is backing the RARE project citing expectations that it would deliver real savings to customers, though the expansion isn’t planned to be ready until 2028. The Department of Public Utilities found that RARE would save about 600,000 Eversource customers roughly $40 million per year over the course of a decade by displacing reliance on more expensive, foreign liquefied natural gas delivered through the Everett Marine Terminal.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission began its review this past February.
“While we anticipate significant cost and reliability benefits for our natural gas customers from this precedent agreement, by no means will it solve our region’s energy affordability challenge alone,” William Hinkle, an Eversource spokesperson, said in a statement. “As we continue working to advance the Commonwealth’s decarbonization and electrification goals, it’s our responsibility to evaluate any and all solutions that will improve reliability and affordability for our customers, including additional natural gas supply.”
High energy costs have emerged as the top household concern in Massachusetts, with electricity prices reaching double the national average, though Bay State voters by and large hold Trump — not Healey — as primarily responsible for that dynamic, according to a recent CommonWealth Beacon poll.
Natural gas remains the backbone of New England’s electric grid, accounting for roughly half of all electric generation in the region, as power demand is projected to rise.
Healey’s championing of RARE, though, is likely to ignite the ire of environmental advocates concerned that locking in more natural gas runs counter to the state’s commitment to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Just two years ago, dozens of green groups demanded that Northeast governors oppose a different major pipeline expansion proposal that ultimately fizzled.
Environmental nonprofit Acadia Center found that despite a sharp increase in the use of natural gas for power and heating in New England since the start of the century, energy prices have only gone up, too. Gas capacity in the region rose by about a third between 2010 and 2024, but prices nevertheless increased, according to the analysis.
Caitlin Peale Sloan, vice president for climate and energy at Conservation Law Foundation, said in a statement that “this letter unwittingly adopts the false narrative that expansion of gas infrastructure will lower heating costs.” And Amy Boyd Rabin, vice president of policy and regulatory affairs at Environmental League of Massachusetts, said that “more natural gas supply is not the answer to Massachusetts’s rising energy costs.”
Healey’s letter didn’t stop at advocating for RARE. She cracked open the door to a much larger and potentially more controversial pipeline expansion that Enbridge is actively considering known as Project Beacon.
That proposal, about four times larger than RARE, would increase gas supply by as much as 10 percent on the Algonquin pipeline system and potentially start operations in 2030. Enbridge executives said on an earnings call over the summer that interest from energy producers and suppliers in purchasing the additional gas “exceeded our initial expectations.”
Getting RARE quickly approved, Healey said, could be the start of a new paradigm — and a sign that “all of the above” really could mean much more additional gas.
“There may be,” she wrote to Wright, “more opportunities ahead.”
Courtesy of Commonwealth Beacon
