We shut down coal in New England. Now, let’s snuff out gas.

Have you heard the news? After years of campaigning, we’ve got a shut down date for the last coal-fired power plant in New England – now let’s snuff out gas.

The Merrimack generating station in Bow, New Hampshire, is closing for good and being replaced with a renewable energy park! Thanks to all of you who’ve protested, taken action, written comments, and gotten into all sorts of good trouble over the years with us and our partners at No Coal No Gas New England.

But we’re not resting on our victorious laurels. Our next campaign is to snuff out fracked gas – especially gas-fired “peaker” plants that will replace the Bow coal plant in the short term. If you’re still fired up to fight fossil fuels in the New England power grid, click here to send a comment to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) telling them to stop forward capacity payments for dirty gas!

We’ve actually taken action at the annual “Forward Capacity Auction” in the past. But for those of you who need a refresher, here’s what’s up.

Every year the regional regulator ISO-NE holds an auction to determine what power plants will supply our electricity, and at what cost. This “auction” is a market mechanism that uses our ratepayer dollars to subsidize the oldest, dirtiest, and most-expensive fossil fuel-fired power plants. These facilities less than two weeks a year, on average. And in the auction this year, ISO-NE proposes giving nearly $350 million ratepayer dollars to these facilities, lining the pockets of investors and stalling progress toward the more efficient, more diversified, and more renewable grid of the future.

No Coal No Gas is working on a two-part strategy this year: Some of us are writing detailed comments on ISO-NE’s 18th Forward Capacity Auction. but we also need lots and lots of people to sign on to our official comment, so FERC and the ISO-NE staff know we mean business.

But comments are due by April 8th, so we need everyone to take action right now! Click here to sign on, and we’ll work with No Coal No Gas to include your name and statement with our public comment on ISO-NE’s annual Forward Capacity Auction.

3 Comments

  1. Yes…on all of these actions and statements! BUT to block traffic of regular people is off putting! IT IS MORE LIKELY THAT PEOPLE WILL SUPPORT THESE EFFORTS IF THEY ARE NOT TURNED OFF BY STUPID TACTICS!

    • Hi Danielle – not blocking anyone’s traffic, we just have a system to moderate and approve comments on post. It prevents robots from spamming our comments with ads – or at least you from having to read all that spam. When you post the same comment over and over again on different posts, it looks like you’re a spam bot, not someone earnestly engaging with the different content in each article and sharing your opinions. So I’ll approve ONE of your many identical comments, with this reply, and then only approve future comments if they’re different (not copy and pasted) and directly related to the content of the post you’re commenting on. Fair enough?

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