As states across our region take action to build a 100% clean, local, and renewable energy future, our region’s electricity-grid operator, the Independent System Operator for New England, or ISO-NE, is keeping us hooked on polluting, expensive fossil fuels.
Over and over, ISO-NE chooses fracked gas over clean, sustainable energy sources, such as wind, solar, and battery storage, to “keep the lights on.” It thwarts state efforts to reach our mandated clean-energy goals. ISO-NE’s regressive actions include extending the life of the most polluting power plants, such as the coal-fired Merrimack Generating Station in Bow, NH, and the gas-powered Mystic Generating Station in Everett, MA, and proposing a new gas and oil fueled peaker plant in Peabody, MA. The result is that communities of color, Indigenous peoples, and the poor bear an unjust burden of the pollution these electricity sources create.
We need a grid operator that is as visionary, and hungry for change, as the communities bearing the brunt of our dirty energy sources and climate change. We demand that ISO-NE work with states and communities to build a just, transparent, and democratic energy grid that
- Stops propping up dirty-energy electrical generation sources for use in the Northeast
- Transitions to 100% renewable energy through conservation, demand reduction, electrification, and expansion of clean, local, safe renewable energy sources
- Encourages small-scale and decentralized energy production and storage that protects our air, water, soil, forests, environment, and communities
- Is governed transparently and democratically with community input on infrastructure siting
- Is affordable and accessible for all.
We deserve an energy grid that is responsive to the needs of ratepayers and the people living with climate catastrophe and pollution, not fossil fuel executives and utilities.