nuclear-news

New England is set to lose eight gigawatts of generating capacity from fossil fuels as aging power plants built in the 1950s and ‘60s retire and go offline. This will create a vacuum that could be filled by Canadian hydropower, natural gas, or offshore wind. Assuming that American utilities would rather build new sources of power in the United States than send their money to Canada, New Englanders will have two options. On the one hand, they could fill the energy gap with wind power, which has historically earned resistance from even climate-conscious NIMBYists. On the other hand, they could go with currently-cheap, cleaner-burning natural gas.The decision is less obvious than one might think.

For as much as we hear about the untapped reserves of natural gas waiting to power our cities, it’s our abundant wind resources that should drive the conversation around clean energy. Winds along the coasts of…