WV Treasury: 2 Data Centers Would Yield $103M/Year in Taxes
West Virginia State Treasurer Larry Pack released a report Tuesday that finally puts real numbers on a question a lot of Mountain State residents have been shouting past each other about: when a giant data center lands in your county, who actually gets the tax money? The answer, according to Treasury Strategic Analyst Mark Muchow, is that two projects alone — the Penzance Management campus in Berkeley County and Google’s project in Putnam County — would generate more than $103 million a year in property taxes, and roughly 62% of it stays home with county commissions and county school boards. Read More “WV Treasury: 2 Data Centers Would Yield $103M/Year in Taxes”
Eight anti-fossil fuel groups gathered on the banks of the Delaware River on September 2 to hold a press conference defending the Delaware River Basin Commission’s ban on fracking. Here’s the part that made us laugh: they already won in July. Republican leadership never even offered the amendment that would have stripped the DRBC of its power to ban drilling. So why hold a rally to defend something that isn’t under attack? Because they’re nervous — and when you read what they’re claiming, you can see why. 
We finally have a number. Two weeks after a casing failure sent frack water gushing across the Infinity Natural Resources (NYSE: INR) Cooper well pad in Young Township, Indiana County, PA, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has put an estimate on it: 336,000 gallons of frack flowback water released during the incident. An “undetermined amount” of that reached Whiskey Run, the small stream below the pad. Here’s what that number actually means — and what it still doesn’t tell us. 
A Dallas-based hyperscaler wants to build a 1.7-million-square-foot computing campus — plus its very own 450-megawatt natural gas power plant — on a reclaimed strip mine in Washington County, PA. The gas would come off a lateral tied to Energy Transfer’s Rover Pipeline, which runs right past the property line. Prime Data Centers made its first real presentation to the Hanover Township Board of Supervisors Monday night, in front of a fire hall packed past capacity with residents who are, to put it mildly, not sold. Three hours of testimony later, the supervisors scheduled four more hearings. 
A Chicago-based developer wants to build a pair of natural gas-fired power plants in a Wisconsin farm town of 1,650 people — and together they’d crank out enough electricity to light up two million homes. It’s another data center story, and it’s another reminder that the demand pull for our Marcellus and Utica gas keeps stretching farther west. Invenergy has submitted engineering plans to Wisconsin regulators for two gas-fired plants in Brillion, Calumet County, about 15 miles from Appleton. The 750-megawatt (MW) Union Depot Energy Center would run around the clock. The 1.2-gigawatt (GW) Forest Junction Energy Center would be a “peaker” — a plant that fires up only when the grid is straining. Combined output: 1.95 GW. If built, Forest Junction would be the second-largest gas plant in Wisconsin. 
A new report from two respected energy economists puts a number on something MDN readers have watched play out all year: PJM’s capacity market is broken, and it’s about to cost ratepayers billions — while creating a wide-open lane for reliable Marcellus/Utica gas. The National Center for Energy Analytics (NCEA) published “Regional Transmission Organizations: Problem or Solution?” on August 27. Authors Jonathan A. Lesser (president, Continental Economics) and Brent Bennett (policy director, Life:Powered/Texas Public Policy Foundation) dig into why RTOs (Regional Transmission Organizations) like PJM — the grid operator covering all or part of 13 mid-Atlantic states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia — are struggling to keep the lights on at a price anyone wants to pay.
A federal judge in Syracuse dropped a legal anvil on New York’s $75 billion climate shakedown yesterday, ruling that the state’s Climate Change Superfund Act is preempted by federal law and cannot be enforced. It’s a complete win for West Virginia AG J.B. McCuskey, the 21 other state AGs who joined him, and the industry groups that piled on. We’ve been following this one since Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the bill in the waning days of 2024 (see 
A pile of poster boards in a YMCA gymnasium is not usually where you find the most important number in a $33 billion project. But on Aug. 27, at the Pike County YMCA in Waverly, Ohio, an SB Energy executive told a Columbus Dispatch reporter something that ought to get every Utica producer’s attention: the turbines are already bought. Not ordered. Not “in negotiations.” Bought — for the first phase of what will be the largest gas-fired power plant in American history. 
Back in May we told you Dominion Energy had brass you know what announcing a monster 3,000-megawatt (3 gigawatt) gas-fired power plant in Cumberland County, Virginia, while its much smaller Chesterfield peaker project was still stuck in the mud after three years of green lawfare (see 
Here’s a pipeline fight where the bad guys aren’t the greens. Last Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and Enbridge subsidiary East Tennessee Natural Gas (ETNG), tossing out a challenge brought not by environmental radicals but by the pipeline’s own customers — a group of small-town gas utilities in Tennessee, Virginia, and Alabama who said they were being stuck with the bill for an upgrade they never asked for. 
In April, we told you the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) was taking a fresh look at the revived Constitution Pipeline and the associated Wright Interconnect project, and that the agency had to decide whether a relatively quick Environmental Assessment (EA) would do the job — or whether it would drag the projects through a full-blown, years-long Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). We got our answer on August 21. FERC staff issued the EA for both projects — 79 pages plus appendices — and the bottom line is the one supporters have been waiting on: building Constitution “would not constitute a major federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.” In plain English — no significant impact. No years-long supplemental EIS is needed. 
A group of North Fayette Township (Allegheny County, PA) residents who tried to block a Range Resources well pad has lost its appeal — not because a court weighed their evidence, but because they live too far away to sue. The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled August 25 that Stephen Bates and Heather Forster, who share an address more than two miles from the proposed pad, lack “standing” — the legal right to bring a case — to challenge the township’s approval in court.