Indiana Shoots Itself in Head, Denies OK for Gas-Fired Elec Plant
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 Indiana Utility Files Request to Build New Gas-Fired Electric Plant). Building the gas plant and solar farm would cost Vectren (meaning ratepayers) $940 million. The cost is passed on to ratepayers because Vectren is regulated, which set up a fierce battle to get it approved. We suspect Marcellus/Utica gas will feed the plant, which is why we’re interested. Unfortunately, yesterday the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission rejected the proposal. Meaning it’s dead.
Read More “Indiana Shoots Itself in Head, Denies OK for Gas-Fired Elec Plant”
Maybe it’s time to let Ithaca just go dark. Turn the electricity off, or rather, let the plants producing electricity that helps power the college town die off, and let rolling blackouts commence across the region. The battle continues to rage in the lib Dem socialist utopia of Ithaca (Tompkins County), NY over a plan to convert a local coal-fired electric generating plant to use much better-for-the-environment and far-less-polluting natural gas. Yet local antis, who irrationally (and we mean clinically insane) hate fossil fuels, continue to object. Fine. Turn off the lights.
Good old American ingenuity has done it again. A company in Oklahoma called Newpoint Gas has, using existing technology, developed a process to produce clean water, electricity and hydrogen energy from natural gas–and do it with zero emissions. How cool is that?
New York State is already doing it, Pennsylvania is actively considering doing it, and now, Ohio has caught the contagion too. The “it” we’re talking about is soaking electric rate payers to pump more money into the coffers of big corporations so they can keep uneconomic and financially failing nuclear electric generating plants operating. Both PA and OH lawmakers have floated plans to soak rate payers in their respective states.
Energy Solutions Consortium (ESC), based in Buffalo, NY, will begin construction on West Virginia’s very first Marcellus gas-fired electric generating plant sometime “this summer.” The exact date has not yet been set, but should be announced soon. However, in a bit of a surprise (for us), the state’s first natgas-fired plant to get built will not be (as we thought) in Brooke County. Instead, it will be in Harrison County.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo finally got his wish last year by forcing the operator of the Indian Point Energy Center (nuclear power plant) located near New York City to agree to partially close down next year, and fully close down in 2021. We recently got a small preview of what will happen when Indian Point goes offline. In March Indian Point went completely offline for two weeks–scheduled outage for one reactor, and a malfunction in the other. Guess which form of energy took up the slack? It wasn’t solar. It wasn’t wind. It wasn’t hydro. It wasn’t magic fairy dust. It was natural gas that rode in to save the day.
The radical group Citizens for a Healthy Jessup is floating a plan to try and prevent any new Marcellus gas-fired electric plants from getting built in the Keystone State. Aided and abetted by a corrupt local newspaper, the group tries to pass itself off as a collection of local concerned citizens. It’s nothing of the sort.
In October 2016, Indeck Energy announced a plan to build a $1 billion electric generating plant (powered by natural gas) in Niles, Michigan, not far from Chicago (see 
Here’s a mind-blower: Royal Dutch Shell is the world’s second largest oil producer (by market value). Yet a Shell official recently said his company wants to be “the largest electricity power company in the world in the early 2030s.” Within 15 years Shell wants to be THE world’s #1 electricity producer! And they plan to do it by using natural gas as the fuel to create all that electricity.
A recent Bloomberg article got it wrong, as they typically do, with this headline: “Biggest Threat to Once-Prized Gas Is Getting Kicked Out of Homes.” Residential natural gas use has been relatively flat, for years. Yet natural gas demand has rocked upward, which begs the question–so who are the new customers using all that gas? MDN friend Jude Clemente has the answer…
According to new data released this week by our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Pennsylvania accounted for 25% of new clean-burning natural gas electric power generation added last year.
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