During a two-week cold snap, Massachusetts turned to oil, burning more than twice the amount of oil in those two weeks than they had during all of 2016.
The two million barrels of oil burned between Dec. 25 and Jan. 9 was more than four times the roughly 500,000 barrels of oil Massachusetts power generators had burned to that point in 2017 and more than double the total amount burned in 2016, according to data Beaton presented to the Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change during an oversight hearing Wednesday.
“Economically, this is a disaster for us in New England. Equally as important, environmentally the emissions and the profiles of what occurred in this timeframe is nothing but a disaster,” Beaton said. “We can’t ignore this and I think this has to be part of an honest conversation of how we look at the challenges facing our system.”