In Somerset, Last Coal-Burning Power Plant In Mass. Shuts Down

Peter Shattuck, director of the Acadia Center’s Clean Energy Initiative, says Dominion didn’t realize there was a revolution going on in energy production — away from coal to natural gas, renewable resources and efficiency.

“The owners really got caught flatfooted, though,” he said. “They put a ton of money into that facility and basically had to drop it a couple of years later.”

[…]

“We’re putting all of our eggs in a big natural gas basket, and it’s risky,” said Shattuck, of the Acadia Center.

He warns we’ve become dangerously over-reliant on natural gas to generate electricity, adding that we need to look to alternatives.

“Brayton is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show we can go straight from coal to clean energy,” Shattuck said. “We know how to do this. We have the tools: offshore wind, energy storage — these are the technologies of the future. We just need to use them in a smart way to make the grid stronger.”

Read and listen to the full story from WBUR Public Radio here.