Snyder County Power Plant Shifting From Coal To Gas Power

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

December 29, 2011 | 12:00 PM

A Snyder County power plant will likely convert from coal to gas power over the next four years. As the AP reports, similar shifts are happening across the country – mostly due to financial reasons.

Ed Griegel, vice president of operations for the Sunbury power plant, said the move is being driven by toughening federal pollution standards and the high cost of burning coal, the Daily Item of Sunbury reported on Wednesday. Similar moves are expected from other owners of power plants that feed the wider mid-Atlantic power grid.
The plant’s owners, Sunbury Generation LP, plan to close five of its six coal-fired generators and replace them with two natural gas-fired turbines.
“We’d like the new plant to be online in 2015,” Griegel said.
The plant, which is in the borough of Shamokin Dam, Snyder County, across the Susquehanna River from Sunbury, began operating in 1949 and can produce about 430 megawatts.