For all the concerns about the health and environmental risks of nuclear power, there’s one benefit that’s hard to debate: Pilgrim Nuclear has powered half a million homes and businesses for the last four decades with no direct carbon emissions. The plant's closure poses a challenge to Massachusetts as the Commonwealth faces a 2020 deadline for ambitious reductions in such emissions.
The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2008 requires Massachusetts to cut greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter - compared to 1990 levels - by the year 2020. A state-commissioned study released earlier this year concluded that would be difficult and that, in fact, the region could see natural gas shortages and price spikes in the next five years.
That was before Entergy Corporation announced it would close Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station no later than June, 2019. Now, the Baker administration says the region - particularly southeastern Massachusetts - could face energy shortages.
But clean energy advocates, like Janet Besser, Vice President of Policy and Government Affairs for the New England Clean Energy Council, say Pilgrim's impending closure creates an opportunity and the impetus to push renewable energy development, and policies to support it.