The Last Coal-Fired Power Plants in New England Are to Close
The company that owns the Merrimack and Schiller stations in New Hampshire plans to turn them into solar farms and battery storage for offshore wind.
The last two coal-fired power plants in New England are set to close by 2025 and 2028, ending the use of a fossil fuel that supplied electricity to the region for more than 50 years.
The decision to close the Merrimack and Schiller stations, both in New Hampshire, makes New England the second region in the country, after the Pacific Northwest, to stop burning coal.
Environmentalists waged a five-year legal battle against the New Hampshire plants, saying that the owner had discharged warm water from steam turbines into a nearby river without cooling it first to match the natural temperature.
In a settlement reached on Wednesday with the Sierra Club and the Conservative Law Foundation, Granite Shore Power, the owner of the plants, agreed that Schiller would not run after Dec. 31, 2025 and that Merrimack would cease operations no later than June 2028.
