Last modified: 11/10/2015 2:02:57 PM
Now that the Pilgrim Station nuclear plant in Plymouth has announced plans to shut down by June 2019, the state attorney general’s office has announced a delay of a regional study it commissioned of the region’s energy needs.
The study by Analysis Group, which had been scheduled for completion by the end of October, has been pushed by a couple of weeks to mid-November. Attorney General Maura Healey announced plans on July 6 to commission the study to identify and evaluate options to address electricity reliability needs, including natural gas capacity demand, in New England through 2030. The study was commissioned in the context of several natural gas pipeline projects being announced for construction.
The study will include an evaluation of all potentially available energy resource options to meet reliability needs, including natural gas, oil, hydro imports, energy efficiency, demand-response, and renewable sources. With an assessment of costs and benefits of each option, consistent with the region’s energy and climate goals, the study will also focus on options that allow the region to meet its requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“In the interest of clarity and completeness, the goals of the study would best be served by re-running the modeling with a 2019 Pilgrim retirement date,” the Attorney General’s office announced on its website.
The 580-megawatt Plymouth nuclear plant, which generates enough to power more than 600,000 homes, was not among the roughly 8,300 megawatts of electric generation that have been projected by the industry to come offline over a four-year period.
The decision to close Pilgrim Station was announced by Entergy Corp. on Oct. 13