Exploring Peaker Power Plant Inequities with Clean Energy Group’s New Mapping Tool

Peaker power plants are some of the dirtiest and most expensive sources of electricity on the grid. While many peakers only operate during a small fraction of the year, emissions from these mostly gas and oil power plants can have an outsized impact on the health of surrounding communities, releasing dangerously high levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and other pollutants on days when air quality is often at its worst.

Clean Energy Group’s Peaker Plant Mapping Tool provides basic information about the more than 1,000 peaker plants in operation across the United States and helps users visualize the disproportionate impact of peaker plants on people of color, who are more likely to live near the dirtiest peaker plants, and lower-income communities, where two-thirds of peaker plants are located.

This Clean Energy Group webinar introduced the Peaker Plant Mapping Tool and provided an overview of how it can be used to explore the economic and racial disparities of peaker plants. UPROSE, a community-based organization fighting peaker plants impacting the Sunset Park neighborhood of New York City, and the Berkshire Environmental Action Team, who has been leading opposition efforts against multiple peakers in Western Massachusetts, also presented on the impact of peakers on their communities and the work they are doing to retire and replace fossil peakers with renewables and energy storage.

Panelists:

• Seth Mullendore, President and Executive Director, Clean Energy Group
• Summer Sandoval, Energy Democracy Coordinator, UPROSE
• Rosemary Wessel, No Fracked Gas in Mass Program Director, Berkshire Environmental Action Team
• Jane Winn, Founding Executive Director, Berkshire Environmental Action Team
• Shelley Robins, Project Director, Clean Energy Group – Moderator