Stop me if you’ve heard this before: An out-of-state company plans to build a natural-gas-fired power plant in eastern Ohio.
Houston-based EmberClear Corp. plans to build a $900 million, 1,000-megawatt plant on 60 acres in Harrison County in the village of Cadiz, a hotspot in the Utica shale oil and gas play.
“The abundant natural gas production facilities in close proximity to the project site make this facility uniquely positioned to produce low-cost power,” the Harrison County Community Improvement Corp. said in a statement.
The county estimates adding 500 jobs during the construction phase, and 30 permanent jobs afterwards.
The announcement comes less than a week after the Ohio Power Siting Board approved a $1.1 billion plant in Columbiana County, also in eastern Ohio. Boston-based Advanced Power Services is building that 1,105-megawatt power plant.
Generally, one megawatt is enough to power 1,000 homes.
The Advanced Power Services plant, operated by subsidiary South Field Energy, plans to start construction in January 2017 and begin operations by January 2020.
EmberClear’s plant is projected to start construction at the end of 2018 and begin operations in early 2021. The EmberClear project, which the developer calls the Harrison Power Project, has not yet been submitted to Ohio regulators. It’s the company’s first in Ohio after proposing four others in Pennsylvania and Mississippi.
Proposed natural-gas plants are dotting the state as larger, costlier coal-fired plants are retired.
EmberClear’s plant marks at least seven gas-fired power plants in some form of development in the state, many of which choose eastern Ohio because of its proximity to oil and gas wells.
Ohio’s electric utilities are not building any of the new plants. They say Ohio’s deregulated market structure makes it too risky, and Columbus-based American Electric Power Company Inc. (NYSE:AEP) is leading a legislative charge to change that.
EmberClear had operated in Alberta, Canada, but in June transferred its assets to Houston-based private investment company Ember Partners LP after it defaulted on more than $6.8 million of unsecured debt.
From Columbus Business First | September 26, 2016
