Coal Generation All But Gone From New England; After Tonight, 2 Small NH Plants Will Remain
SOMERSET, Mass. — For Pat Haddad, a good day is one when she returns home from the state Legislature to see steam rising from Brayton Point Power Station's twin 497-foot-tall cooling towers. New England's largest coal plant has long powered the economy in Haddad's hometown of Somerset, a community of 18,000 people on the south coast of Massachusetts.
But good days have been few and far between lately. Soon, they will be gone altogether. Brayton Point will extinguish its boilers for the final time tomorrow. When it does, coal will have all but disappeared from this six-state region of 14 million people. Two small and seldom-used coal plants in New Hampshire will be all that remains of a once-mighty industry.
"The sun is literally and figuratively setting," said Haddad, a Democrat who represents Somerset and three other communities in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. "It's so hard to see."
If President Trump is to fulfill his promise of reviving the coal industry, it will have to be without New England. In 2016, Brayton Point's last full year of operation, coal accounted for 2 percent of the region's power generation.
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