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power plants
We Don’t Need Fossil Fuel Peaker Plants
New Englanders are fighting for a just transition to a better electric system.
Sep 12, 2024
Our electric system is intentionally complicated. We are expected to receive our bills from the electric companies every month, pay without question, and have little say in what that money is used for.
In the New England, New York, and PJM regions, a portion of our electric bills every month goes to a mysterious “auction” in the “capacity markets” that promise power plants funding into the future even if they never operate. We are told this is the system we have to work within to ensure reliable energy. But that is not true.
Just because a system is in place does not mean it is the best way to operate. When I was in elementary school I learned how to use the lattice method for multiplication. My Mom taught me long multiplication. Both methods got me to the solution to the equation. So why can’t our electric grid think like this?
The time is now—for energy efficiency, community conservation, and clean energy in New England and beyond.
Our regional electric grid operators here in New England, ISO New England (ISO-NE), oversee a process called the “Forward Capacity Auction,” which enables fossil fuel power plants across the region to stay in operation. They claim that this market approach will ensure certain energy sources can stay on our grid for backup energy. Instead of being a mechanism for reliable energy supplies though, this auction has become a huge waste of money and an enabler of climate chaos. Right now this system keeps fossil fuel peaker plants online. Peaker plants are those oil, methane gas, and coal burning plants that are only called on during peak energy usage—like during a cold snap or heatwave—and thus only get turned on a handful of days a year. These plants currently get hundreds of thousands of dollars to mostly sit idle.
This doesn’t have to be the way we handle our electric grid. We can do better—we just have to imagine better.
The No Coal No Gas campaign showed up at the fossil fuel peaker plants in New Hampshire this August to demand a transition to clean energy, community conservation, and a better grid system. There are three peaker plants in New Hampshire without closing dates that are really harming our communities: Newington Station on the Piscataqua River, Lost Nation in Groveton, and White Lake in Tamworth. Our electric bills gave each of these plants hundreds of thousands of dollars last year despite the fact that they ran just a handful of times (10-15% of our bills fund the system this money came from). These three plants burn oil, methane gas, or jet fuel on the occasion that they do get turned on, resulting in all sorts of pollution impacting the communities they inhabit.
The thing is, if we changed the way we managed our energy grid, we wouldn’t need these peaker plants. They could easily be replaced with solar and battery storage. The regional electric grid operators could prioritize more immediate energy conservation resources both from the public and from large energy users to reduce the peaker energy load so that we don’t need as much backup on the grid. We could improve energy efficiency across the board to reduce the amount of energy we need as a region, even with an increase in electric vehicles. We could decrease electricity bills for people across the region if we didn’t need to promise all this money to peaker plants.
We can have clean energy and reliable energy—this isn’t a compromising situation. Transitioning off of fossil fuels does not make our energy less reliable—especially when those fossil fuels cause the devastating storms we’ve seen lately that cost a whole lot of money to recover from. On top of that, most of the failures on our grid, including huge price spikes like what the grid saw on December 24, 2022, were caused by fossil fuel plants. This situation is reflective of the problems other regional grids across the country are facing as climate change gets worse.
So what’s the hold up? ISO-NE board and staff members who say, “This is the way it’s been.” Elected officials and Granite Shore Power (who owns the New Hampshire peaker plants) who want to protect the profits of fossil fuel corporations. Grid operators who claim that electric grid management needs to be “fuel neutral” in their policies. The fact is, we need to stop thinking inside these tiny boxes we’ve given ourselves. If new ideas are not working in the system we have, it means it’s time to change the system.
When I watched friends drop a massive banner down the side of Newington’s smokestack just a few weeks ago, I thought about how they were not stuck in what doesn’t seem possible. Instead, they acted. They didn’t think a 175-foot banner would be impossible to make. They just made it. They showed the owners of that peaker plant that we can do difficult things, including transitioning off of oil and gas. They showed all of us that we can imagine a better future together.
I walk into energy regulatory meetings with experts even though the people there made those spaces inaccessible to the general public and community organizers. I have been working to understand the complexities of the energy system even though the people I’m challenging to think outside the system don’t want me there. I know a transition to clean energy and justice-focused solutions to the climate crisis won’t happen overnight, but I also know that people in positions of power are dragging their feet in the fossil-fueled past.
We don’t need fossil fuel peaker plants when much simpler solutions to energy reliability exist. The time is now—for energy efficiency, community conservation, and clean energy in New England and beyond. I know we can build an energy system that works for the everyday people who this grid is meant to serve.
Biden EPA Accused of 'Caving' to Industry Pressure on Gas-Fired Power Plants
"Biden is on thin ice with young people," said the Sunrise Movement. "He can't throw a bone to us on Monday, let us down on Tuesday, and expect our generation to turn out in the numbers he needs us to in order to win."
Mar 02, 2024
The youth-led Sunrise Movement on Friday panned the Biden administration's decision to delay a regulatory crackdown on existing gas-fired power plants by exempting the major polluters from a forthcoming rule aimed at curbing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
E&E News, which first reported the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) move, noted that the delay "could push a major part of the president's fight against global warming until after the November election."
"Under the new approach, EPA is still expected to complete a rule in April that would cut greenhouse gas pollution limits for existing coal-fired and future natural gas plants," E&E News reported. "But the rule coming out in April will no longer include limits for existing gas-fired plants—the country's top generator of electricity."
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement that splitting the rules would allow the agency to take "a new, comprehensive approach to cover the entire fleet of natural gas-fired turbines, as well as cover more pollutants including climate, toxic, and criteria air pollution."
But that rationale didn't satisfy some climate advocates. The Sunrise Movement said it was "disappointed" in the decision and accused the administration of "caving to pressure" from industry lobbyists.
"Biden is on thin ice with young people," Sunrise added. "He can't throw a bone to us on Monday, let us down on Tuesday, and expect our generation to turn out in the numbers he needs us to in order to win."
"Don't get us wrong, we applaud the EPA for finalizing the rules regulating harmful local pollutants from these power plants," the group added. "These rules are a huge win for environmental justice and will protect frontline communities from toxic air pollution. But, we need more from Biden."
"EPA promises that some future proposed rule will address these emissions, but time is not on our side, and the agency's generally lethargic rulemaking pace does not leave one optimistic."
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee and a member of the chamber's Environment and Public Works Committee, also slammed the decision to—at least temporarily—exempt gas-fired plants from tougher regulations.
"EPA's new power plant rule omits a massive emissions source: existing gas power plants. Making a rule that applies only to coal, which is dying out on its own, and to new gas power plants that are not yet built, is not how we are going to reach climate safety," said Whitehouse. "Failing to cover the plants responsible for the vast majority of future carbon pollution from the power sector makes no sense."
"It is inexplicable that EPA, knowing of these emissions, did not focus this rulemaking on existing gas-fired plants from its inception," the senator continued. "EPA promises that some future proposed rule will address these emissions, but time is not on our side, and the agency's generally lethargic rulemaking pace does not leave one optimistic. With temperature records being broken daily and a spiraling cascade of climate-driven extreme weather events affecting families across America and the world, the planet cannot afford action at EPA's pace. The agency must complete a robust rule covering the existing gas fleet by the end of this year."
The EPA's original proposal to strengthen pollution standards for new and existing power plants drew criticism from environmentalists who said it would cover just a small percentage of existing gas plants and rely far too heavily on ineffective carbon capture technology. The utility industry, meanwhile, lobbied aggressively against the proposal.
Abigail Dillen, president of Earthjustice, defended the EPA's new approach, arguing that its decision to separately pursue more ambitious regulations for existing gas-fired plants would allow the agency "to consider technologies that were not considered in its initial proposal and ensure that new standards do not shift pollution to dirty, uncontrolled plants and the communities they pollute."
But Sunrise warned Friday that putting off any new rules targeting existing gas plants could leave the fate of any broader regulatory effort "up to the results of the 2024 election."
"That's not how a climate president acts," the group said.
Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive 2024 GOP nominee, aggressively rolled back environmental regulations during his first four years in office and appears poised to do the same—potentially on an even larger scale—if he wins in November.
"Trump and his advisers have made campaign promises to toss crucial environmental regulations and boost the planet-heating fossil fuel sector," The Guardian reported last month. "Those plans include systemically dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency."
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