Trump says the solution to high New England energy costs is a natural gas pipeline project. It’s not nearly that simple.

Now, Trump has made the Constitution Pipeline a priority and the lead company behind it recently said it will only go forward if there is “sufficient customer demand and support from Northeast governors.” That’s where the politics of energy becomes complicated with Trump back in office.

Most of the region’s governors want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels such as natural gas and use more clean, renewable energy. But Trump has made that transition more difficult, especially by halting offshore wind projects, and the governors of New York and Connecticut have signaled openness to discussing new natural gas pipelines.

Governors of other Northeast states, notably Massachusetts, haven’t publicly indicated much interest.

“The issue that we have in New England is that for a few days of the year prices are high, maybe seven days,” Massachusetts Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper said at a recent energy-affordability event. “You don’t build a gigantic pipeline for seven days a year.”

Healey has taken an “all of the above” approach to energy, emphasizing all sources. On Tuesday, she proposed energy legislation that she said would save state ratepayers $10 billion over the next decade. But her plan did not include boosting the availability of natural gas.

As governor and before that as attorney general, Healey has pushed to wean Massachusetts off of fossil fuels. The state also is required under law to effectively eliminate emissions by mid-century, which would be difficult with the use of more natural gas. Asked about the Constitution Pipeline, her spokesperson, Karissa Hand, said, “Governor Healey will review any energy proposals through the lens of whether they would lower costs and move us toward energy independence.”

Trump has his own idea for how to accomplishing those goals and it can be summed up in three words: drill baby drill.

On his first day in office, he declared a national energy emergency to increase the production of oil, coal, and natural gas. At the same time, Trump halted all new permits for wind farms pending a federal review. Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Maine, and Connecticut are among 17 states and the District of Columbia that sued over the halt on wind projects.

An executive order creating the National Energy Dominance Council specifically called for “approving the construction of natural gas pipelines to, or in, New England.” And Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently predicted it was “quite likely” construction on the Constitution Pipeline would start before the end of the year, after Trump publicly threatened “to use the extraordinary powers of the federal government to get it done.”

“The Northeast has long had the most expensive energy in the country due to the inadequate natural gas pipeline capacity in the region, leaving it vulnerable to price spikes and system reliability issues…. Expanding pipeline infrastructure in the Northeast and across the country is a top priority,” an Energy Department spokesperson said in a statement to the Globe. He would not comment specifically on the Constitution Pipeline.

A spokesman for Williams Cos., the principal partner behind the Constitution Pipeline, did not respond to an email request for comment.

There is a good business case to be made for the Constitution pipeline because it would move low-cost natural gas to a high-demand area, said Marc Montalvo, president of Daymark Energy Advisors, a Worcester-based consulting firm. At the same time, Montalvo said that although natural gas produces carbon emissions, it’s preferable to oil when more environmentally friendly options such as wind power have been stalled by the Trump administration.

“If the alternative were wind and solar, there’s not an environmental upside,” he said. “But with the delays and the cancellations of offshore wind, it looks like there might be more years of oil burn in the offing. So maybe gas is not such a bad thing after all.”

But the project would take three to five years to complete, and require work on other infrastructure to get the additional gas into existing pipelines into New England, Montalvo said.

“There’s a lot of stars that would have to align for all of this to go forward,” he said.

The 124-mile pipeline was proposed in 2012 to deliver natural gas from hydraulic fracking shale fields in Pennsylvania to an interconnection point in eastern New York that supplies the state and New England.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the project two years later but environmentalists, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., opposed the pipeline and New York officials denied it water quality permits in 2014. Then in mid 2019, federal regulators ruled New York took too long to rule on those permits and allowed the project to go forward. But the delays led to higher cost estimates — about $1 billion from the initial $700 million — and the developers gave up six months later.

Joseph LaRusso, manager of the Clean Grid Program at the Acadia Center, an advocacy group working to cut Northeast carbon emissions in half by 2030, said building the pipeline now would probably cost $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion.

“While the conversation around pipelines has become resurgent again in the wake of this cold winter and concerns about affordability, there really is no indication that any increase in interstate gas transmission pipeline capacity into New England would make a difference in terms of prices,” he said, noting that prices have not moderated despite the region’s pipeline capacity increasing by 51 percent since 2014.

Spokespeople for the two biggest utilities in Massachusetts, Eversource and National Grid, said they were open to expanded access to energy supply but did not take a position on the Constitution Pipeline.

Kevin Book, managing director of research at ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington, D.C., research firm, said he could envision a deal in which New York agrees to Constitution Pipeline approval in exchange for the Trump administration allowing some wind projects to resume.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul met with Trump at the White House in March after he had publicly stated his support for the Constitution Pipeline. A Hochul spokesperson said at the time it was “a productive conversation and we look forward to continuing the dialogue in the coming weeks.”

There have been no developments since and Hochul’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Book acknowledged it’s unusual for a project ditched by its own developers to be under consideration again five years later. But a new administration and rising energy costs in the Northeast have had an impact.

“The facts on the ground have changed,” he said.

Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera.