President Trump has promised a return to coal, but one Pennsylvania town isn't having it. What was once the state's largest operating coal plant in Homer City, about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh, was partially imploded last month to make way for a huge AI data-center campus to be powered by natural gas from the adjacent Marcellus shale basin, the Wall Street Journal reports. It could become the country's largest gas-fired power plant, generating up to 4.5 gigawatts of power—nearly enough to power Manhattan, or more than 3 million average US households. It's "one of the most ambitious projects to emerge amid a boom in power demand from data centers that run AI operations," per Bloomberg.
The Homer City Energy Campus, stretching more than 3,200 acres, will be able to supply power to thousands of local homes, Homer City Redevelopment (HCR) and builder Kiewit Power Constructors Co. said Wednesday, per Quartz. But it will be "designed to meet the growing artificial intelligence ... and high-performance computing ... needs of the innovative technology companies shaping America's digital future," according to a release. The coal-fired Homer City Generating Station closed in 2023 after 54 years in operation due to "the combination of higher coal prices and cheap power prices," per the Journal.
Redevelopment planning then began as the plant "had the infrastructure and the ability to generate a lot of power," says Andrew Shannahan, a partner at investment firm Knighthead Capital Management, HCR's majority owner. Site preparation and the infrastructure to supply power to the data centers and grid will cost more than $10 billion, per the Journal. The data centers will cost "billions more," per Quartz. Cooling towers and three of four stacks at the former generating station were imploded March 22. The fourth stack is expected to come down soon. Construction on the gas-fired power plant could then begin later this year. Officials expect to start generating power in late 2027. (More Pennsylvania stories.)
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