Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight
Shuttering the plants follows a national trend, as cleaner, cheaper natural gas supplants coal across the country
Credit: PSEG
Hudson County coal-fired facility
The old power plant in Jersey City had not run the past seven months, but a couple of weeks ago in the middle of a mini-heat wave, the nearly half-century-old facility got called on one more time.
Not without some challenges, though: This time, the 625-megawatt Hudson unit was running on natural gas instead of the coal that routinely delivered electricity to 600,000 customers.
But tomorrow that era — for both coal and natural gas at that facility — ends once and for all, not only for the Hudson unit, but also for the Mercer coal-fired plant. Their owner, PSEG Power, is retiring the two biggest coal plants left in New Jersey.
It is a trend occurring around the nation, as low-priced natural gas crowds out the fuel that once provided the bulk of electricity, as well as most of the pollution — mercury and other airborne toxin and greenhouse-gas emissions that contributed to climate change.
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