HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The owners of what was once Pennsylvania's biggest coal-fired power plant said Wednesday that they will turn it into a $10 billion natural gas-powered data center campus designed to capitalize on the fast-growing energy demands of Big Tech companies to power artificial intelligence and cloud computing applications.
The former Homer City Generating Station, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Pittsburgh, will host seven gas-fired turbines to power data centers on site with up to 4.5 gigawatts of electricity, according to the owners, an investor group named Homer City Development.
That amount of electricity is enough to power about 3 million homes and would be the nation's third-largest power generation facility after the Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam in Washington and the new Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, according to federal data.
The project will be the largest capital investment ever in Pennsylvania, said state Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, R-Indiana, whose district is home to Homer City.
Construction is expected to begin this year and power could start flowing by 2027, the group said in a statement. The cost to prepare the site and build the data centers could exceed the initial $10 billion investment by billions more, the group said.
Much of the critical infrastructure for the project is already in place from the shuttered Homer City power plant, including transmission lines connected to the mid-Atlantic and New York power grids, substations and water access, the group said. It could also supply electricity to the wider power grid, it said.
The developers were awarded a $5 million state grant to extend a gas line to the property, which sits atop the prolific Marcellus Shale natural gas reservoir.
Last month, the group demolished the three cooling towers and four smokestacks still standing from the former coal plant. It shut down in 2023 after 54 years in operation.
The owners, Homer City Development, blamed competition with cheaper natural gas, unseasonably warm winters that demanded less power, the rising cost of coal and increasingly expensive environmental regulations.
The late 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT — built with help from Microsoft's data centers — ignited worldwide demand for chatbots and other generative AI products that typically require large amounts of computing power to train and operate.
That has sent Big Tech companies in search of new power sources, spurred interest in a new wave of nuclear reactors, revived interest in building new gas-fired plants and stoked concerns among states and federal regulators about electricity shortages.
It's also prompted utilities to delay the retirements of aging power plants and to bring nuclear power plants out of retirement, including last year's announcement that the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant will reopen under a 20-year agreement to feed Microsoft's data centers.
Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter.
The smokestacks and cooling towers of the former coal-fired Homer City Generating Station crumble in a planned demolition to make way for a new natural gas-fired power plant in Homer City, Pa., Saturday, March 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
The smokestacks of the former coal-fired Homer City Generating Station crumble in a planned demolition to make way for a new natural gas-fired power plant in Homer City, Pa., Saturday, March 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
The smokestacks of the former coal-fired Homer City Generating Station crumble in a planned demolition to make way for a new natural gas-fired power plant in Homer City, Pa., Saturday, March 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday said the Trump administration must work to bring back a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to prison in El Salvador, rejecting the administration’s emergency appeal.
The court acted in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears he would face persecution from local gangs.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had ordered Abrego Garcia, now being held in a notorious Salvadoran prison, returned to the United States by midnight Monday.
“The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,” the court said in an unsigned order with no noted dissents.
It comes after a string of rulings on the court's emergency docket where the conservative majority has at least partially sided with Trump amid a wave of lower court orders slowing the president's sweeping agenda.
In Thursday's case, Chief Justice John Roberts had already pushed back Xinis' deadline. The justices also said that her order must now be clarified to make sure it doesn’t intrude into executive branch power over foreign affairs, since Abrego Garcia is being held abroad. The court said the Trump administration should also be prepared to share what steps it has taken to try to get him back — and what more it could potentially do.
The administration claims Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, though he has never been charged with or convicted of a crime. His attorneys said there is no evidence he was in MS-13.
The administration has conceded that it made a mistake in sending him to El Salvador, but argued that it no longer could do anything about it.
The court’s liberal justices said the administration should have hastened to correct “its egregious error” and was “plainly wrong” to suggest it could not bring him home.
“The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by her two colleagues.
Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, said the ordeal has been an “emotional rollercoaster” for their family and the entire community.
“I am anxiously waiting for Kilmar to be here in my arms, and in our home putting our children to bed, knowing this nightmare is almost at its end. I will continue fighting until my husband is home,” she said.
One of his lawyers, Simon Sandoval-Moshenburg, said “tonight, the rule of law prevailed," and he encouraged the government to "stop wasting time and get moving.”
In the district court, Xinis wrote that the decision to arrest Abrego Garcia and send him to El Salvador appears to be “wholly lawless.” There is little to no evidence to support a “vague, uncorroborated” allegation that Abrego Garcia was once in the MS-13 street gang, Xinis wrote.
The 29-year-old was detained by immigration agents and deported last month.
He had a permit from the Homeland Security Department to legally work in the U.S. and was a sheet metal apprentice pursuing a journeyman license, his attorney said. His wife is a U.S. citizen.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant DHS secretary for public affairs, said Thursday that the justices' order for clarification from the lower court was a win for the administration. “We look forward to continuing to advance our position in this case,” she said.
An immigration judge had previously barred the U.S. from deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador in 2019, finding that he faced likely persecution by local gangs.
A Justice Department lawyer conceded in a court hearing that Abrego Garcia should not have been deported. Attorney General Pam Bondi later removed the lawyer, Erez Reuveni, from the case and placed him on leave.
Associated Press writers Lindsay Whitehurst and Rebecca Santata contributed to this report.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks during a news conference at CASA's Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
