When Tom Irwin joined the fight to close New Hampshire’s Merrimack and Schiller Station coal-fired power plants in 2015, his two kids were teens. He would listen to their fears about climate change and their laments about their future. Chief among them: Would they and their generation be inheriting a livable planet?
“They were paying attention, and they were very concerned,” says Irwin, CLF’s vice president for New Hampshire. “I thought about the legacy we were leaving the next generation, and I was frustrated.”
The Schiller and Merrimack power plants are New England’s last two coal-fired behemoths. During their operating lives, the two relics, harkening back to 1949 and 1960, respectively, have pumped out deadly soot, climate-damaging carbon pollution, and heavy metals like mercury into the air. With such a legacy, it was time to move on.
Ten years later, Irwin and the rest of New England are celebrating. Thanks to CLF and our partners, Schiller and Merrimack stations are slated to close by 2026 and mid-2028. Finally, Irwin’s children – now adults – can breathe a little easier knowing New Hampshire has taken a big step forward for a cleaner future.
“It’s really about persistence,” reflects Irwin. “CLF stuck with this. Our Coal-Free New England campaign was bold and ambitious. And when it came to Merrimack and Schiller stations, we persisted in working multiple strategies to defeat an outdated, polluting, and expensive fuel that really has no place in a modern economy.”
And it is not just in the fight against coal where CLF has persevered – and eventually succeeded. CLF has spent the last two decades working for a cleaner tomorrow across the region. We’ve successfully passed state laws in almost every state limiting carbon emissions, and we’ve pushed to develop clean energy options like offshore wind.
“Work on these issues doesn’t happen overnight, but we’re dedicated to seeing it through,” says Irwin. “Nobody’s kids should have to worry about the air they breathe or what kind of climate they’ll inherit.”
An Ambitious Strategy From the Beginning
Two decades ago, nearly 20% of New England’s electricity came from coal. In New Hampshire, the two coal-fired power plants generated 560 megawatts of dirty power. Unsurprisingly, New Hampshire has some of the highest reported asthma rates in the country. In addition to dirtying New Hampshire’s air and warming the climate, the Merrimack and Schiller plants were discharging thermal pollution – heated water from their operations – into the Merrimack and Piscataqua Rivers.
The environmental degradation associated with dirty coal-fired power spurred CLF to begin our Coal-Free New England campaign in 2010. Over the last two decades, we worked with a diverse coalition of partners to shut down the eight coal-fired plants still operating in the region. The fight began by showing that coal was no longer a competitive fuel in the marketplace. It costs customers far more to squeeze electricity from coal than from any other source. That argument won out in many statehouses in New England, and, slowly, coal-fired power plants toppled across the region – until only the two in New Hampshire remained.
In 2019, CLF took on Merrimack Station’s impacts on the Merrimack River. In partnership with the Sierra Club, we sued the plant’s owner over its releases of heated water into the river that gave the polluting plant its name. Last year, Granite Shore Power, the owner of Merrimack and Schiller stations, agreed to settle the lawsuit and other advocacy brought by CLF and Sierra Club and shut the plants down permanently.
“Coal is an inefficient, dirty, and costly fuel,” says Irwin. “Wind and solar power are cheaper to generate and better for the environment. Those resources, combined with energy efficiency, represent a cleaner, healthier future.”
Persisting in the Fight for Clean Energy
Although we’re celebrating the ending of coal in New England, we’ve long fought a tandem battle to reduce the region’s reliance on natural gas and build our clean energy infrastructure. And recently, we’ve seen the fruits of our labor. New wind projects are planned in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine, providing enough clean energy to power more than 7 million homes. Meanwhile, Massachusetts has repurposed several of its coal plant sites for the new era. The grounds of the old Salem Station will become a staging area for offshore wind turbines. In Holyoke, a 17,000-panel solar farm now fills the space left by its coal plant. And in Somerset, the former site of the region’s largest coal-fired plant will become an offshore wind hub connecting the growing number of new wind projects to the electrical grid.
As we build our clean energy future, we have always remembered that we must pass laws supporting it. We remain committed to passing a climate law in New Hampshire that will make the state a full partner in tackling the climate crisis. And we intend to ensure our electrical grid is prepared to take on all the new electricity generated by wind and solar power. These aspirations will take time. But our fight against coal – and our ultimate victory – proves where persistence will lead us. And that’s to a brighter tomorrow where children no longer must worry about their future.