Pennsylvania Generator to Invest Up To $700 Million to Install Dry Scrubbers

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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The Homer City Generating Station in Pennsylvania plans to spend up to $700 million to install dry flue-gas desulfurization (dry scrubber) equipment at two of its units, the plant's operator told a local community meeting earlier this month. The two units to be scrubbed began operating in 1969 and have a combined generating capacity of 1,234 megawatts (MW). Homer City has a 650-MW third unit, built in 1977, which already has a scrubber.

Click on image at right for a photo of the Homer City station.

Located in southwestern Pennsylvania, the Homer City Generating Station is owned by a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) (Fairfield, Connecticut) and operated by Edison Mission Energy (EME) (Santa Ana, California), a unit of Edison International (NYSE:EIX) (Rosemead, California). EME has applied for permits and hopes to begin building the scrubbers this spring. The two-year construction project could create as many as 600 jobs. Kiewit Power Engineers Company (Lenexa, Kansas), a unit of Kiewit Corporation (Omaha, Nebraska) will be the construction contractor.

EME expects the scrubbers will lower SO2 emissions by more than 90%, Charley Parnell, an EME spokesman, told Industrial Info. He said that since the plant was owned by a unit of General Electric, any decision about closing Homer City instead of installing scrubbers was never EME's to make. But Parnell did point out Homer City is much larger and newer than many other coal-fired plants that have announced premature retirements recently in response to the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) and Mercury and Air Toxins Standards (MATS) rule recently adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Washington, D.C.).

CSAPR was finalized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Washington, D.C.) late last year but stayed by a federal court at the end of December. For more on CSAPR, see October 13, 2011, article - EPA Proposes Technical Changes to Finalized Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. For more on MATS, see December 27, 2011, article - Environmental Protection Agency Finalizes Mercury and Air Toxics Standards.

Constructing a scrubber at Homer City "is essential to ensuring the long-term viability of the plant," Parnell said in an interview late last week. "We have an aggressive construction schedule, primarily because of CSAPR. If we want to operate Homer City after 2014, we need to start installing scrubbers right away."

Parnell told Industrial Info that a scrubber manufacturer has been selected, but he could not release its name. He estimated that 200-250 people attended a four-hour community meeting January 10. "The overwhelming concern of attendees was jobs," he said. "Were their current jobs safe? If they were looking for work, when and where could they apply for a job? This area has been pretty ravaged economically, and most attendees wanted to know about the jobs the construction would create. Homer City is a huge economic engine for the local community."

Between 1999 and 2001, EME spent more than $270 million to install selective catalytic reduction (SCR) equipment at all three Homer City units equipment to lower emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOx). The scrubber installed on Unit 3 was designed to lower SO2 emissions by up to 98%.

Because of its size and its emissions, the Homer City Generating Station has attracted its share of environmental lawsuits. In early 2011, the plant's current and former owners were sued by the EPA and the states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, which claimed the owners violated the federal Clean Air Act when scrubbers were not installed in the 1990s, when the plant was undergoing major modifications. The suit was tossed out in late 2011.

"Right now, they are well out of compliance" with governmental air-quality standards, John Poister, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania), told The Tribune-Democrat. "This is a major move on their part to get into compliance."

"The Homer City plant is a great, big power plant, and it has an equally large amount of emissions," Jan Jarrett, CEO of the environmental group Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future (Harrisburg) told The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "It's nice to see good environmental regulation actually drive the right decision."

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