EDF Accuses New England Gas Utilities of $3.6B Market Manipulation

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Once upon a time the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) held out the veneer of practical environmentalism--people who would at least listen to the fossil fuel industry and in some rare cases, reach their hand across the isle to work on initiatives with the industry (for example, they are a partner in the Pittsburgh-based Center for Responsible Shale Development). But over the past few years that veneer has been stripped off, and now the EDF has been exposed as a hack organization, just like all the rest of the loons on the left. Case in point is their latest propaganda, issued last week. The EDF published a "report" that makes the rather preposterous claim that New England customers have overpaid utility bills by $3.6 billion due to collusion between the natural gas and electricity industries. EDF spins the outlandish theory that Avangrid and Eversource brilliantly conspired to create Enron-style fake gas shortages involving a whopping 3.5% of the capacity of the Algonquin pipeline--all in order to drive up electric clearing prices for a wind farm Avangrid didn't yet own, a rarely dispatched Avangrid oil peaker run under rate of return, and three crappy, rarely operated oil and coal plants in New Hampshire--plus nine little hydro dams that Eversource was trying to unload for years (finally sold last week). EDF's tall tale is so bizarre (and hard to follow) it's laughable. However, mainstream fake news media picks it up and regurgitates it to an unsuspecting public, so we're here to set the record straight on yet another Big Green hoax...

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