Small Utica-Fired Electric Plant Coming to Ohio State U Campus
A bit of good news which is sure to drive insane snowflakes on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus over the edge of the cliff. Engie, a multinational electric utility company headquartered in France, recently won a contract to provide energy to Ohio State University for the next 50 (!) years. On the heals of that announcement, Engie has announced a potential plan to build a 60-megawatt Utica gas-fired electric power plant right on the campus of OSU. It will be the first-ever electric plant located on campus. Talk about gall! Doesn’t Engie know that OSU’s precious snowflakes (lib kiddies that hate fossil fuels) will melt?! That their precious sensitivities will be mortally offended? We’re waiting for the storm that’s about to be unleashed with the news of the new plant. Grab some popcorn and enjoy the entertainment…
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The main reason anti-drillers are hellbent on preventing any new drilling, and indeed the use of natural gas, is because it’s a “fossil fuel” and when burned, it creates carbon dioxide (CO2). However, what many non-thinking antis often overlook is that the use of natural gas instead of coal, oil and other fossil fuels leads to LESS carbon dioxide emissions. They blather on about limiting natural gas usage when it is because of natgas that CO2 emissions continue to go DOWN, year after year. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has just published an article highlighting the fact that CO2 emissions in the U.S. went down again in 2016–mostly because of a change from using coal to generate electricity to using natural gas, much of it extracted from the Marcellus/Utica…
MDN first told you about IMG Midstream in August 2014 (see 
MDN has been highlighting Marcellus/Utica gas-fired electric plant projects from some time. Our lead story today is about IMG Midstream’s “tiny” power plants–a contrarian strategy of building small rather than large. We cover these projects because (a) they use a lot of natural gas, and therefore are an important new market/demand for our oversupply of natural gas here in the northeast, and (b) each of these projects results in millions (sometimes billions) of dollars of new investment in local communities where they get built. Electric generating plants are a feel good, good news story. However, we have to ask the question, Are we now overbuilding new power plants? On the surface it seems ludicrous to even ask the question. “Everyone knows” that coal generating plants are closing down and something (typically natgas) has to replace all of that generating capacity that’s closing down, right? Not so fast. The electricity market is complex. The market where most of the plants we cover are getting built is in the PJM grid, which covers all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. Natural gas and coal are not the only two choices to generate power. In fact, did you know that the #1 power generating source in PA is nuclear? An article from Bloomberg discusses a “glut of supply” in PJM which has led to prices falling throughout the region. So once again, are we building too many electric plants too fast? Will there be enough demand for all of the electricity we generate from new natgas-fired plants?…
In March MDN brought you the news that APV Renaissance Partners (a subsidiary of American Power Ventures) will submit a permit to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) “within the next month” for a combined-cycle power plant at the old Hatfield’s Ferry site in Greene County, PA–to be powered with Marcellus Shale gas (see 
It’s hard to keep track of all the Marcellus and Utica Shale-fired electric plants being planned, built and going online. We recently highlighted a list of 11 such projects getting built in Ohio (see 
Pssst. Hey buddy. Got a spare power plant you want to sell? Consumers Energy is Michigan’s largest utility, providing natural gas and electricity to 6.7 million of the state’s 10 million residents in all 68 Lower Peninsula counties. Consumers is canceling an existing contract with Entergy’s Palisades nuclear plant in 2018 and needs to replace the electricity they were buying from the plant. So Consumers is going shopping–for a natural gas-fired power plant that can provide up to 800 megawatts of electricity. Who wants to lay odds that whichever plant they end up buying will be supplied, at least partially, but Utica/Marcellus gas…
A few weeks ago MDN reported on an upcoming meeting (to be held March 27) in Monroe County, OH to announce a new project to build a 485-megawatt Utica gas-fired electric plant (see 
The nation’s electric grid is a complex system. You don’t ever think twice about–you flip a switch and the electricity flows, powering lights, appliances, etc. But ensuring the power is always there, always on when you need it, keeps a lot of people awake at night. The U.S. “grid” is actually a bunch of smaller grids. In the northeast there are several such organizations. One of them is called the PJM, a regional transmission organization (RTO) coordinating the movement of wholesale electricity in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia (including PA, OH and WV). PJM, like other RTOs, faces challenges with ensuring there will always be enough electricity produced to meet demand. Over the past several years coal-fired electric generating plants have been closing. Natural gas, and in a much smaller sense renewables (wind and solar) have taken up the slack. Wind and solar are notoriously unreliable. The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. Natural gas needs pipelines to get where it’s going. There has been a concern that with coal disappearing from the generation mix, that an “over-reliance” on natgas and renewables will make electricity supplies problematic and unreliable. In an effort to address questions of reliability, PJM just completed and published a 44-page study titled, “PJM’s Evolving Resource Mix and System Reliability” (full copy below). What does the study find? Even with fewer coal plants producing electricity, PJM’s electric supplies, using more and more natgas and renewables, will be just fine…
[NOTE: In the original version of this post, MDN incorrectly referred to the name as Center Point Terminal. It is, in fact, Center Port Terminal. Sorry!] One of MDN’s sharp subscribers emailed us with an exciting tip. On March 27 a public meeting will be held in Woodsfield, Ohio (Monroe County) about building a 485 megawatt gas-fired power plant–to be built on twenty acres of the 200 acre former Ormet site, now known as Center Port Terminal. That much we have been able to confirm. Our tipster also speculated this new power plant may be used to provide electricity to an ethane cracker. We have not, so far, been able to verify the cracker rumor. Here is what we do, and don’t, know about this new power plant project coming in Monroe County…
Jeff Quigley, director of energy markets at Stratas Advisors, says that electric power generation is “one of the biggest incremental drivers of new demand” for Marcellus Shale gas. A close second behind powergen, according to Quigley, are industrial sources. That is, big manufacturing plants. Also according to Quigley, while “there’s still a place for coal” in the U.S. energy mix, natural gas is “on pace to eventually displace coal for power generation.” Quigley is speaking today at the Guttman Energy 2017 Energy Forum in Canonsburg, PA. Here’s a preview of his comments…
Earlier this month MDN brought you a list of the existing and/or planned natural gas-fired electric generating plants in Ohio (see 