Neccessity is the mother of invention.

Nothing will stimulate development of energy efficiency and renewable alternatives in the NorthEast faster than increasing prices, decreasing electricity supply, and brownouts/loadshedding.

Building new coal plants now, without any significant effort to harvest the low-hanging fruit of energy efficiency would be a tragic economic and environmental mistake. Heating oil and electricity are widely used in the NorthEast to heat pathetically energy-wasteful housing stocks. 30 years ago we built my brother's passive solar home in Downeast Maine and it still uses around 10% of the heating energy that his neighbor's houses' consume. Today, vastly superior windows, insulation, and controls are available compared to what we used in 1976. Requiring new/remodel construction to meet Germany's PassivHaus standard would make much more economic sense than constructing new coal plants, in the face of the inevitable coal cost increases coming.

Even global warming deniers cannot deny the environmental destruction that coal causes when it is mined ("mountain top removal"/stripmines/etc.) and when it is burned (particulates kill 60,000 per year in the US alone, tons of mercury/etc.).

Personally, I am glad that the combination of billion dollar capital requirements and NIMBY opposition to any proposed coal plant site will likely make coal plant construction in the NorthEast almost impossible, until supply shortages/escalating costs make it a moot point.