Peabody 'peaker' power plant prepares to go online

A recent article on WGBH.org by Sophie Hartley and Hannah Richter, “New Peabody 'peaker' power plant prepares to go online less green than promised” drew our attention for the way it exposed the systemic issues behind the lack of progress in decarbonizing power generation.

The article begins: “The new Peabody power plant will soon start up for the first time, but it won’t be running on clean fuel as officials once assured. It will burn diesel and natural gas.” A flawed start, considering that the “clean fuel” referred to is a blend of hydrogen and natural gas. Clearly, some important background information was omitted from the analysis.

While it was pointed out that the manager of the plant, Joe Anastasi, claimed (accurately) that the plant is equipped to burn natural gas, oil and hydrogen, what was left out was the fact that since hydrogen is less energy dense than natural gas, even burning a 10-20% blend would only result in a 2-4% reduction in carbon.

Important context was also missing from the article in regard to the wildly optimistic projection from Brian Quinn, MMWEC’s director of engineering and generation assets, that the plant’s eventual goal is to convert to 100% green hydrogen, an endeavor which would require a complete and costly retrofit of the plant. In spite of the billions of dollars being poured into development of commercially viable quantities of green hydrogen, to date that goal is remote at best. According to a 2024 report from the Manhattan Institute, “…the prospects for manufacturing low-cost, emissions-free hydrogen by 2030 are unrealistic, barring major technological breakthroughs and their commercialization. Even if such breakthroughs do occur, the physical realities—and cost—to produce, transport, and store hydrogen make it inherently uneconomic as an energy carrier.”

We don’t know if the developers of the Peabody peaker plant were engaging in wishful thinking or if they were simply positioning the plant as environmentally sound in order to gain approvals (despite knowing that their projections for availability of green hydrogen were unrealistic at best); but the primary context for this situation, which was not explicitly covered in the article, is that the plant should never have been built in the first place.

As Massachusetts struggles to achieve its decarbonization goals in this time of climate crisis, there was never a viable justification for building new fossil fuel infrastructure, particularly in an environmental justice neighborhood. This plant will still be contributing to the state’s carbon debt 20 years from now. Clean alternatives, such as battery storage that can come online quickly to support peak power needs, are available.

Energy companies around the country are touting the blending of hydrogen with natural gas for power generation, but it’s a misleading and impractical tactic that is clearly aimed more at maintaining fossil fuel infrastructure than at reducing their contributions to the climate crisis.

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The Massachusetts Clean Peak Coalition envisions community-led transitions of peaker plants to 100% clean and renewable energy that will safeguard the health of all residents, especially those most impacted by the health, economic, and racial injustices of fossil fuel infrastructure, across the state of Massachusetts. CleanThePeakMA.org