Largest Coal-Fired Plant In New England To Close By 2017
October 09, 2013
Owners of the Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Mass., the largest coal-burning pant in New England, filed papers indicating the plant will no longer provide power to the region’s electricity grid when it is retired in May 2017. The decision to retire the plant came just months after the station was sold by Virginia-based Dominion to Energy Capital Partners, a private equity firm with offices in New Jersey and California. The plant’s new owners pointed to a number of reasons for the planned shutdown, including low electricity prices from a surplus of natural gas and the need to invest “significant capital to meet environmental regulations and to operate and maintain an aging plant.” A spokeswoman for ISO-New England said the retirement of older fossil fuel-powered plants has been considered as part of the grid’s strategic planning process.