Clear River will secure state’s energy future
On June 1, New England finally shuttered its last large coal plant, Brayton Point. Environmentalists, policymakers, and many residents of the East Bay and Southeastern Massachusetts cheered the closure. This has been a long time in the making.
While the closure undoubtedly benefits our air and water quality, it also increases the energy-shortage challenge New England faces.
Brayton Point supplied the region with a whopping 1,200 megawatts of energy — enough to power 1.5 million homes. All told, nearly one third of the energy we use today is expected to retire, just like Brayton Point, in the next 10 years. That is according to New England’s independent grid operator. It’s a huge gap to fill. We can’t go back to outdated, dirty coal and oil power plants. But we know as well that renewable energy alone can’t fill that gap in the next several decades.
We need to move ahead now, building reliable and affordable energy sources that will support our current and future economic needs. The issue is especially acute for Rhode Island, where we pay the second-highest electric costs in the contiguous U.S.
That’s why we formed Rhode Islanders for Affordable Energy, a new coalition of hundreds of large and small business owners, building and construc- tion trade unions, manufacturers, business groups, homeowners, and some of the state’s biggest energy users.
We are uniting because we want to draw attention to this issue, and encourage state leaders to finally tackle our high energy costs. These high costs are stifling Rhode Island’s economic recovery. Rhode Island companies simply cannot compete while paying runaway energy costs. These costs make it more difficult to attract new companies to the state, and retain the ones we have. Too many companies and jobs have been lured away from the Ocean State by the appeal of low-cost energy in the South and West.
The proposed Clear River Energy Center in Burrillville will save Rhode Island residential and commercial ratepayers millions, provide us with a reliable new energy source that will stabilize the cost of energy, and improve our air quality by replacing older and dirtier power plants. From an environmental perspective, every megawatt of coal that is replaced by natural gas helps to reduce CO2 emissions by almost 50 percent, NOx emissions by 80 percent, and SOx emissions – the sort that produce acid rain – by 99 percent!
We believe Rhode Island needs a mix of energy types to fill our current demand and future economic development needs. Clear River will use the latest state-of-the-art technology. This technology uses less natural gas to produce more electricity, saving consumers money. What is more, it can turn on and off quickly, allowing the grid to manage intermittent renewable resources which will actually help the development of renewable energy projects.
The developers of the Burrillville power plant are ready to invest $1 billion in Rhode Island and create hundreds of construction jobs as well as business opportunities for local contractors that are desperately needed. That would represent the largest economic development project in the state, by far. We should welcome that investment. Moreover, this project will make our region’s energy costs competitive with other areas of the country thereby allowing our economy to prosper as we look to attract new business.
Accordingly, we encourage state regulators to approve the Clear River Energy Center and put Rhode Island on the path, finally, to addressing the vexing energy-cost problem. Our continued economic vitality depends on it.