On January 22, 2014 in the Boston Globe article by David Abel titled “Leaks in Gas pipes exceed estimates”, the paper cites a Harvard University study where they found that gas pipelines are leaking like sieves.   The leaks, just in the greater Boston area are three times previous estimates by regulators and the service providers.  The cost to gas users is around $90 million annually and is enough to heat 200,000 homes for an entire year!  So much for those summaries sent by the gas companies showing how much gas each of us use.  The greenhouse gas effect of methane is 20 times greater than carbon, so this study points to the fact that our models for greenhouse emissions are probably underestimating the effect from leaking pipelines and blaming other sources or are totally missing the real culprit.

The real culprit appears to be the same that we see in the financial world.  After a while, the regulators become so chummy with the large companies being regulated, that the public is harmed.  With the finances, we saw this with the SEC and Federal Reserve Bank being more interested in preventing small companies from entering the industry than in auditing custodians. The result being that Bernie Madoff was audited many times by the SEC and not once did they notice he never traded a security but they did require all companies to have a contingency plan in case the power went out or a succession plan which only adds extra work for small companies.

With the gas companies, the regulators are harming consumers by $90 million a year.  Who is reimbursing the consumer for this fraud?  If we figure that greater Boston area has 1 million households and according to the US energy department half the households in Massachusetts use gas then we are looking at $180 per household being wasted by leaks.  But a better way to explain the magnitude of the problem is to state 1 in five homes (200,000 per the Harvard study) would not have to pay anything to heat their home in 2015!

Furthermore, the waste contributes to global warming.  The mandated end of manufacturing incandescent bulbs probably would not have been necessary if these leaks were fixed!  So rather than us paying $90 million a year to have a better pipeline system, our regulators along with the utilities they regulate charge us $90 million a year to make global warming worse!  There is no excuse for this.

Source:

http://www.eia.gov/state/data.cfm?sid=MA#ConsumptionExpenditures