Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Electrical Generation | Industrywide Issues | New York | Tompkins County
Ithaca: Turn Elec-Producing Coal Plant into Elec-Using Data Plant
Since 2013 so-called environmentalists have protested, agitated and lobbied to prevent the Cayuga Power Plant in Lansing (Ithaca suburb) from switching from burning coal to burning clean natural gas–because they irrationally hate fossil fuels (see NY Eco Group Protest to Stop Plant Converting from Coal to NatGas). The region needs more electricity, not less. However, a new plan has been hatched to convert the coal plant that currently produces electricity into a data center that uses massive amounts of electricity (and taxpayer money)! Only in Planet Ithaca.
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We’re always delighted to share news of a “new” pipeline project in the Marcellus/Utica. This particular project from Dominion Energy, tiny compared to most, its unusual in that it will flow natural gas from western PA into Ohio to feed a new natural gas-fired electric plant. You don’t often see gas from PA flow to Ohio for local use. Kind of a “man bites dog” story.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tried to stop a fully built, brand new natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Orange County from going operational last year by instructing his Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to deny renewing an air permit it had approved just five years earlier (see 
U.S. Senator John Cornyn, Republican from Texas, along with Republican Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, along with (surprise!) two Democrat Senators, Chris Coons from Delaware and Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, are all co-sponsoring a new bill called the Launching Energy Advancement and Development through Innovations for Natural Gas (LEADING) Act. While on the surface the bill seems to be addressing mythical man-made global warming, it’s true intent is to ensure loony birds in federal and state governments don’t outlaw the use of natural gas to generate electricity.
Earlier this year, under the direction of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the state issued new draft regulations aimed at shutting down most of the state’s “peaker plants”–small electric generating plants that produce electricity for brief periods during high demand (see 
Advanced Power Services finally breaks ground…TODAY…on building an 1,100 megawatt Utica-fired electric plant in Columbiana County, OH (see 
A landowner in Jessup Borough (Lackawanna County, PA, near Scranton) has filed a lawsuit against the Borough Council as a whole (and the individuals who serve on it), claiming they rezoned the landowner’s property, cutting them out of millions of dollars, as retribution because the landowner had the audacity to sell property to the Marcellus gas-fired Lackawanna Energy Center (LEC) power plant.
Two Democrat New York State legislators, Senator Jen Metzger and Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, are floating parallel bills that would outright ban any new natural gas-fired electric plants or natural gas pipelines in the state. Really bizarre stuff. They’re calling this lunacy “Freedom from Fossil Fuels.” Want to run a new gas pipeline from the local utility to a new housing development or commercial business park? Forget it. No new gas customer hookups *anywhere* in the state–not just in Westchester County (see 
A radical Pennsylvania environmental group called PennEnvironment is pushing a media narrative that a “collection of 88 Republican and Democratic Pennsylvania state legislators” have joined together to introduce and endorse a truly insane plan that would require all (as in 100%) of electricity generated in the Keystone State to come from so-called renewables by 2050–just 30 years from now. It will NEVER happen, but that’s beside the point. Our point is that one named Republican is part of this “bipartisan collection” of 88 leftists. The lone Republican is PA State Sen. Tom Killion from the Philadelphia area.
One of the few “green” advocates we respect is Michael Shellenberger, a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” Green Book Award Winner, and president of Environmental Progress, a research and policy organization. His articles often appear on the Forbes website (we’ve linked to many of them in our “Best of the Rest” roundup). Shellenberger, one of the few environmentalists to endorse and defend fracking, recently penned an article that accuses the fracking/shale industry of a double standard when it comes to their opposition to bailing out nuclear plants with government subsidies.
In October 2017, MDN told you a second Marcellus gas-fired electric generating plant is planned for Greene County, PA (see 
Last September MDN told you that a new natgas-fired electric plant planned for the People’s Republic of Rhode Island in Burrillville was on life support, with antis reaching to pull the plug (see 
In June 2018 MDN told you about a plan by Midwest utility company Vectren to build a 900-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant (and a 50-acre solar farm) to replace a retiring coal plant, in Warrick County, Indiana (see