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The article talks like this is a huge problem.

Actually, this is progress on a large scale in a backwater place in America.

New England was my home for 6 years 30 years ago. Back then, there was almost total dependence there and in NY upon heating oil. Natural gas pipelines were not allowed(they were trying to bring in the Iroquois p/l back then) due to NIMBY).

Coal was rarely used due to its particle discharge so utilities like ConEd barged in oil to burn for power generation.

To alleviate demands, two nuclear power plants, one on Long Island and one near Boston, had been constructed at costs of $3.5bn and +$5bn but were not allowed to start due to environmental lawsuits.

The only way to heat was to use heating oil. This caused the entire area to suffer from the whims of oil pricing. It is recalled that every year Congress would pass huge subsidies specific to these states to offset the cost of hearing oil.

Now with natural gas, there is cheaper energy and mixed supply. No longer are the subsidies needed. And people are getting high-paying jobs in Pennsylvania to extract and transport this gas.

Also, we have freed up oil to be used in transportation and lubes/plastics sector.

This is all good, for New England and America.

Heating with oil and propane is still the most common method outside the cities. We have a natural gas line here in Nashua, NH and north through Manchester and up to Concord. There is also a line that runs from Canada down through Maine right along the Atlantic coast. However, everyone else has the choice between heating oil and propane. Therefore, most people have some other kind of supplemental heat source for their home. Wood stoves and pellet stoves are the most popular.

In the last few years some companies have come out with wood pellet furnaces. These are fed by a hopper that is installed outside of your home. Therefore, you need a delivery company that can blow the pellets through a pipe to the location of the hopper.

Lastly, the least expensive fuel(unless you have free wood like me)is anthracite coal. Coal has become a dirty word and companies promoting it do not call it that anymore. None of these heating system alternatives are cheap to install. They can run from $2000(for a cheap stove) or $15K for the pellet furnace/hopper system. There have been state and federal tax credits available to help subsidize the cost. There is even a town in northern NH trying to get hundreds of people to switch to support the local pellet mill in their town. They are offering specific tax incentives to help subsidize the pellet furnace installation.

Wood pellet heat is much more common in Europe than it is in the US. There are many electric generation plants in EU using bulk wood pellets to fire their plants. There are several wood pellet plants planned for construction along the eastern US coast just to supply pellets to be shipped to Europe. Europe has mandated that their CO2 production must decrease. Therefore, coal consumption is going to go down. They will switch the electric generation fuel to either natural gas(from Russia or the ME)or wood pellets from North America.

I agree with your observations.

In my 50 years of living in Connecticut and Massachusetts, constant protests (even door to door in rural areas) were active against nuclear power, although it was the cleanest of all.

The huge majority of homes in the New England countryside use home heating oil (diesel colored differently than that at the pump, so it can be identified for a different tax bracket). Another 5% use wood stoves, but now the EPA is trying to regulate those.

Go figure.