The Merrimack Generating Station in Bow, NH will cease coal operations in 2028 thanks to immense public pressure and legal battles to shut it down!
Merrimack station only operates during peak electrical demand currently, and has a broken boiler.
When operating at full capacity, this coal plant generates as much carbon in one hour as 26 years of the total carbon emissions for an average American.
Merrimack Station also costs electrical customers and the town of Bow millions of dollars. The installation of scrubbers cost ratepayers $500 million and barely touched the plant's climate emissions. Eversource (the former owner of the coal plant) sued the Town of Bow over the generator’s tax valuation, and the state supreme court ordered the taxpayers of Bow to reimburse Eversource $10 million.
The health risks of breathing polluted air and environmental harms to the Merrimack river remain in Bow residents’ backyards as long as they continue to run.
Merrimack Station is owned by a joint venture company called “Granite Shore Power, LLC” which is in turn owned by an investment firm based in Connecticut: Atlas Holdings. The station’s continued operation is supported by millions of dollars of subsidies that go to Granite Shore Power (called “Forward Capacity Payments”) from electricity rate payers across New England. Over 188 million dollars were earmarked for subsidies to Bow between 2018 and 2023.
A Just Transition
This coal plant is closing! A just transition for this energy facility must:
Create jobs restoring the site and fund job-creating community economic development.
Support the IBEW workers’ in the transition plans.
Include outreach to the surrounding communities impacted by the plant, including Bow and Pembroke residents.
CEO of Granite Shore Power, Jim Andrews has published an op-ed about the “renewable energy parks” planned for Merrimack Station and Schiller (in Portsmouth). He named “solar, battery, green biofuels and clean hydrogen” in his plans for the future. Biofuels and hydrogen are unacceptable transition plans and are NOT clean or renewable despite the fossil fuel industry’s insistence that they are.
Imagine what we could do by repurposing the millions in subsidies already earmarked for Bow. The $148 million allocated to Bow over a recent four-year period could buy over 397 megawatt hours of battery storage to shave off peak demand. Combined with cleaning up the site and installing solar panels rather than coal piles, Bow could be a clean energy hub!
