The United States relies on more than 1,000 natural gas- and oil-fired peaker power plants across the country to meet infrequent peaks in electricity demand. These peaker plants tend to be more expensive and inefficient to run for every megawatt-hour generated than baseload natural gas plants and emit higher rates of carbon dioxide and health-harming criteria air pollutants. Peaker plants are also typically disproportionately located in disadvantaged communities, where vulnerable populations already experience high levels of health and environmental burdens.

Renewable energy and energy storage systems are beginning to emerge as competitive replacements for this fossil fuel infrastructure. Simultaneously, numerous states across the country are designing incentives and targets to support energy storage deployment. Together, these developments provide a unique opportunity to use energy storage to strategically displace some of the most polluting peaker power plants on the grid.

In this screening analysis, we identify peaker power plants across nine states that may be prime candidates for replacement based on operational and grid characteristics, and whose replacement may yield the greatest health, environment and equity co-benefits. This approach aligns state efforts to adopt energy storage with environmental and societal goals. We supplement our screening analysis with a discussion of how storage adoption and peaker plant replacement is affected by the policy and regulatory environment in each state.

Below, we report our findings for each individual state in our study: Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Texas. These findings include state-level summaries, interactive data visualization tools, and technical documentation summarizing data, methods and the policy and electricity market landscape.