Agency finalizes streamlined New Source Review process for project adds to air emissions and coal ash storage mandates for power plants in site specific cases, despite environmental group concerns.
Energy developer Anbaric in May signed a $650-million agreement with an affiliate of Commercial Development Co. to develop a renewable-energy center at a former coal plant in Somerset, Mass.
The cooling towers for the Brayton coal plant, once the largest coal plant in New England and the last coal plant in Massachusetts were demolished in a matter of seconds.
Under some scenarios, a new Trump administration proposal to reduce carbon emissions from power plants could curtail the construction of new natural gas combined-cycle power plants by as much as 30% and increase the use of existing coal plants by 13%, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s own regulatory impact analysis on its proposal, the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule.
Strengthening the transmission and distribution grid, increasing distributed generation and even trimming vegetation would likely do more to improve grid resilience than a proposed draft order from the Trump administration that would force system operators to keep coal and nuclear plants operating for at least two years.