Filthy Five

What are the Filthy Five?

The Filthy Five alludes to five power plants that were situated in Massachusetts. The Filthy Five were built before 1977 and were thusly exempt from modern pollution laws for a long time.

Grasping the Filthy Five

The Filthy Five produced several times the amount of pollution made by modern plants at levels that surpassed those permitted under the updated Clear Air Act of 1990. Notwithstanding, these plants were exempt from modern pollution regulations since they were legacied in under the old laws. They delivered large amounts of sulfur, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and mercury. The legislative leader of Massachusetts went under political pressure to take care of these plants and issued an order expecting them with comply to modern pollution regulations.

The last of the Filthy Five power plants was Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Massachusetts, which was a 1,500-megawatt plant and the largest coal-terminated plant in New England. It went dark in May 2017 as part of a shutdown that had been in progress for quite a long time. Different individuals from the Filthy Five included Salem Harbor Power Station, which stopped consuming coal on June 1, 2014. The Salem Station produced power beginning in 1951, yet covered due to low natural gas prices, low demand for power, and tightening Federal pollution rules.

Progress to Cleaner Energy

As in different areas of the country, the finish of coal in Massachusetts came about from tenacious environmental activism, yet from a number of economic factors, including stricter pollution regulations, cleaner energy alternatives and a changing market in which coal use had become expensive and inefficient. Cleaner energy options, for example, natural gas have largely supplanted coal as a primary source of energy in the region since the closure of the Filthy Five. Almost 50 percent of New England's energy presently comes from natural gas, while a third comes from nuclear power, as per ISO New England, the organization that manages the regional power grid. A similar trend applies cross country. The share of U.S. power create by coal tumbled from 52 percent in 2000 to 37 percent in 2012 because of shale gas development. The[ Energy Information Administration](/energy-data administrator) predicts that natural gas will create more power than coal by 2035.

This progress has not come without entanglements. Extended low temperatures throughout the colder time of year of 2017 spurred extreme energy interest for heat for homes. Nonetheless, natural gas pipeline capacity wasn't adequately expanded to satisfy the need. As the region's natural gas delivery infrastructure expands, this concern ought to diminish.

Features

• The Filthy Five was a name given to by and large to five coal-terminated power plants in Massachusetts.
• The plants had been in operation for a really long time utilizing more seasoned, dirty technology, however were permitted to proceed with operation under the federal Clean Air Act.
• The last of the Filthy Five stopped operation in 2017.