Private power plant developer Clean Energy Future is canceling a planned gas-fired power plant in Trumbull County, Ohio, because of recently approved state legislation that subsidizes two in-state nuclear plants.
The company scrapped its plans for the project after Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, signed legislation mainly aimed at subsidizing a pair of nuclear plants owned by FirstEnergy Solutions Corp., Clean Energy Future President and CEO Bill Siderewicz was quoted as saying in Youngstown, Ohio, newspaper The Vindicator on Aug. 21.
Manchester, Mass.-based Clean Energy Future has already spent upwards of $1 million in development and permitting costs, according to the report. In an Aug. 20 news release, Siderewicz detailed benefits to the community such as future construction jobs, water purchases from the city of Youngstown and taxes that will be lost with the cancellation of the project.
The project being canceled has been referred to both as the Lordstown 3 project and the Meander Energy Center, Siderewicz said in an email Aug. 22, and would have been the third project Clean Energy Future developed in northeastern Ohio. It would have been located next to the 940-MW Lordstown Generating Station, now owned by several private equity investors and which began operating in the PJM Interconnection market last fall. Clean Energy Future other's project at the same location is the 940-MW Trumbull Energy Center. It is also developing another gas-fired plant, the Lucas Energy Station (Oregon Energy Center), in northwestern Ohio.
LS Power Group, another private power plant developer, said in July that passage of the Ohio subsidy legislation would prompt it to abandon plans for a 500-MW expansion at its gas-fired Troy Energy plant in Wood County, Ohio.
