page_title: Energy in Vermont
section_title: Vermont Yankee
hierarchical_section_title: Energy in Vermont / History / Vermont Yankee
caption_attribution_description: English: The Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant.
context_page_description: Vermont electric power needs are served by over twenty utilities. The largest is Green Mountain Power, a subsidiary of Énergir which recently also took over Central Vermont Public Service. Together this single company represents 70% of the retail customers in Vermont. The state is a small electricity consumer compared with other states. Therefore, its electricity sector has the lowest carbon footprint in the country. As of 2010, the state had the lowest wholesale electricity costs in New England. Efficiency Vermont engages in aggressive initiatives to cut residential electricity waste, which often identifies other problems that it claims can save hundreds per household per year. Accordingly, Vermont's overall energy bills are also relatively lower than in the rest of the New England states.
  Vermont also has arguably the most technologically advanced transmission grid in the US, linked by 1,300 miles of optical fiber cable which is available not only for smart grid applications but also for connectivity purposes for Vermont communities. The state-owned transmission utility VELCO has marketed this capacity for municipal broadband, WISP and commercial ISPs as backhaul.
context_section_description: The Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant was commissioned in 1972.
  Vermont through the 2010s had the highest rate of nuclear-generated power in the nation, 73.7 percent.  Vermont was also one of only two states with no coal-fired power plants, which nuclear proponents often cited as a reason to keep it open.
  Anti-nuclear political pressure ramped up after Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and especially the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011.
  As of 2010, most of the energy was purchased wholesale for distribution from Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and Hydro-Québec. The costs at Vermont Yankee were about 3 to 5 cents per kilowatt hour.
  In August 2013, Entergy announced that economic factors, notably the lower cost of electricity provided by competing natural gas-fired power plants, forced it to cease operations and schedule the decommissioning of the plant, which happened at the end of 2014.  The plant closed eighteen years before its current operating license was set to expire on March 21, 2032.
caption: The Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, in Vernon.
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