WASHINGTON – Hours before the ball dropped on 2010 in Times Square, governors from 11 Northeast and mid-Atlantic states signed an agreement paving the way for the region-wide adoption of a California-style Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), a policy that will dramatically restrict consumers’ access to local and affordable supplies of home heating fuel without doing a thing to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
By design, an LCFS is engineered to deliver higher prices at the pump, and sharp reductions in the availability of LCFS-targeted home heating oil – essential energy supplies that have become prohibitively expensive for many working-class families in New England. Remarkably, even at a time when more Americans are seeking assistance under the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) than ever before, governors across the region are actively working to make those fuel resources more expensive – by actively working to impose a Low-Carbon Fuel Standard.
A story in yesterday’s USA Today sheds new light on just how severe the situation has become:
- “A record number of U.S. households are applying for help to pay home heating bills with 17 states fielding application requests that are up more than 20% from last year, the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association says. Almost 9 million U.S. households are expected to need help paying winter energy bills. That’s up 15% from the record-setting 7.7 million last year, the association says.”
