Mission Accomplished: Massachusetts Replaced 1,500 Megawatts With Nothing
Four years ago today, Joe Biden stood on the rubble of the former Brayton Point Power Station and declared it “the frontier of clean energy in America.”
What he was really celebrating was destruction.
Brayton Point had been New England’s largest coal plant, generating nearly 1,500 megawatts of dependable electricity, enough to power one in five Massachusetts homes and businesses. It supported good jobs, substantial local tax revenue and the kind of baseload generation New England desperately needs.
The plant had already been closed and imploded by the time Biden arrived. But instead of mourning the permanent loss of that productive capacity, Biden made the rubble a backdrop for his energy agenda. He promised that an offshore-wind cable factory would soon rise in its place, bringing hundreds of manufacturing jobs.
That factory was canceled, the jobs never arrived, and the power generation is gone forever.
Somerset was left with the economic wreckage. Federal economic-development officials found that the community’s two power-plant closures cost the region more than 350 jobs and between $18 million and $22 million in tax revenue.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts residents now pay about 30.4 cents per kilowatt-hour for residential electricity, roughly 68 percent above the national average.
Now Governor Maura Healey and Massachusetts politicians lecture President Trump about “affordability.”
It is the perfect monument to their energy agenda: demolish reliable generation, applaud the explosion, promise something greener will eventually appear, and then go home when it does not.
Mission accomplished.
July 20, 2026