LS Power Shops Portfolio of Gas-Fired Power Plants in PA, Elsewhere
LS Power, headquartered in New York City, has developed or acquired 47,000 megawatts (MW) of power generation, including utility-scale solar, wind, hydro, battery energy storage, and natural gas-fired facilities. We’ve previously mentioned LS Power in a number of MDN articles (see our LS articles here). Bloomberg is reporting that LS is actively shopping a major portion of its portfolio — natural gas-fired power plants that provide about 5 gigawatts (GW) of power to the nation’s largest power grid — PJM.
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According to S&P Global Commodity Insights, U.S. power sector natural gas demand set another record high in the first quarter and has remained higher year over year into April. Demand from the power sector for natural gas totaled 32.7 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) in the first quarter of 2024, up 2 Bcf/d from the first quarter of 2023. The trend has continued into April. Gas demand from power plants averaged 30.8 Bcf/d from April 1-18, which is 2.1 Bcf/d higher than the same period of 2023. However, whether the trend will continue through the rest of the year is an open question.
Welcome to Paradise, where natural gas is the fuel of choice to generate electricity. In 2017, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) held a dedication ceremony for the Paradise Combined Cycle Gas Plant in Drakesboro, Kentucky (see 
Once a month, the analysts at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issue the agency’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), their best guess about where energy prices and production will go in the next 12 months or so. We sometimes poke good-natured fun at the EIA because their predictions go up in one month, and in the next month, they go down, etc. What about the latest STEO dart board, published on Tuesday? EIA predicts the average spot price for natural gas will be $2.20/MMBtu in 2024. That’s down significantly (17%) from the $2.65 it predicted just two months ago in February’s report (see 
Wisconsin Electric Gas Operations, doing business as We Energies, proposes to spend $1.2 billion dollars at its Oak Creek Power Plant (Oak Creek is a suburb of Milwaukee) to convert the facility from a coal-fired power plant to a natural gas plant that will generate 1,100 megawatts of electricity. Last Friday, We Energies filed a formal application with the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC), revealing more details about the project and its projected timeline. We hopes to have the project built and online by the summer of 2028.
In September 2022, MDN told you about a relatively modest-sized gas-fired power plant planned for Superior, Wisconsin, called the Nemadji Trail Energy Center (see 
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro traveled to Scranton, PA, in mid-March to announce a proposal to “immediately pull Pennsylvania out of a multi-state carbon cap-and-trade program” (the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI) and instead enroll PA in its very own RGGI-like carbon tax program (see 
South Carolina House Bill H.5118, sponsored by S.C. House Speaker Murrell Smith, addresses the pressing need for more power generation in the Palmetto State in the wake of explosive population growth. H.5118 would establish specific timelines for the S.C. Public Service Commission (SCPSC) and other permitting agencies to rule on applications for all future projects, including gas-fired power plants. The legislation would also establish a streamlined process by which all future appeals go straight to the S.C. Supreme Court (which happens about 99% of the time). Yet radicalized leftist groups like Conservation Voters of South Carolina (CVSC) are having a heart attack, trying to defeat this commonsense bill.
It’s full speed ahead for the radical anti-Marcellus Democrats in the Pennsylvania State Legislature. Last week, PA Gov. Josh Shapiro traveled to Scranton, PA, to do a dog-and-pony show announcing his personalized version of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax that would apply only to PA (see 
The annual CERAWeek by S&P Global conference is happening now in Houston. Everybody who’s anybody is there. (Yes, we’re nobodies; we’re not there!) Oil and gas CEOs, politicians, regulatory agencies — they all convene in Houston to talk about energy at what is billed as “the world’s premier energy conference.” Toby Rice, CEO of EQT Corporation (the largest natural gas producer in the U.S.), was there yesterday. He had some VERY interesting things to say during a panel discussion and on the sidelines. Rice touted the need for more pipeline infrastructure, predicting wild swings in the price of natural gas absent new pipelines. He also said there’s an even bigger market than LNG for U.S. natural gas. What could it be?
Last week, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro traveled to Scranton, PA, to do a dog-and-pony show announcing his personalized version of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax that would apply only to PA (see 
Thanks to abundant, clean Marcellus shale gas, Pennsylvania remained the country’s top electricity exporter in 2023 while simultaneously reaching a new low for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from electricity generation, according to the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office’s (IFO) latest analysis. Yes, you read that right. PA is producing more electricity than ever, yet CO2 emissions from electric generation are lower than ever. How can that be?
The Independent System Operator-New England (ISO-NE) is warning “blue states” in the northeast (states controlled by Democrats with an iron fist) that their strategy of pushing 100% renewables and eliminating fossil fuel energy has a fatal flaw. At the federal and state levels, elected Democrats are pushing hard to phase out fossil fuel-fired power infrastructure and replace it with sources of so-called “green” energy like wind and solar. Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont — the states that are served by ISO-NE — all have green energy mandates. And they are all in imminent danger of blackouts.
In an embarrassing act of ignorance, seven Virginia state delegates and two state senators (all of them Democrats) who represent the greater Richmond, VA area signed a statement last Wednesday opposing Dominion Energy’s plan to build four small “peaker” electric generating plants in Chesterfield County, VA, a Richmond suburb (see