Construction has begun on a proposed $10 billion project to create a 4.4-gigawatt natural gas-fueled power plant and hyperscale data centers on a hilltop outside Homer City in Indiana County.
The aboveground construction began more than a week ago, after extensive underground foundation work was completed at what the company says is the largest natural gas-fueled power plant in the nation, according to Homer City Redevelopment LLC, the plant owner.
Kiewit Power Constructors Co. of Omaha, Neb., which is building the power plant, has about 1,200 construction workers at the site. The project is expected to create 10,000 onsite construction jobs and 1,000 direct and indirect permanent jobs in technology, operations and energy infrastructure, according to Homer City Redevelopment.
The site is 3,200 acres — about 5 square miles — according to Homer City Redevelopment. The city of Greensburg, by comparison, is about 4 square miles.
The power plant in Center Township is expected to begin producing power in 2028, said Colin Maynard, a Homer City Redevelopment spokesman. When Homer City Redevelopment announced on April 2, 2025, that it would construct a power plant and a data center campus at the 3,200-acre site, it expected construction to begin in 2025 and that the power plant would go online in 2027.
To prepare the site for the new power plant, most of the remnants of the former coal-fired power plant that shut down in July 2023 have been demolished, with the exception of one building, Maynard said.
One of the issues facing data centers is criticism that they will draw power from the electric transmission grid, creating the potential to drive up electric costs for consumers. At the Homer City plant, developers have said that while about 37 megawatts of power will be directed to the hyperscale data center campus, the remainder will be sold to PJM, the organization that manages the electric grid for Pennsylvania and 12 other states.
A spokesperson for PJM could not be reached for comment.
The cost of the massive project is being financed by Knighthead Capital Management LLC, a New York-based private equity firm. It said it has invested more than $1 billion into the project. That $1 billion investment exceeds the total revenue generated by the former coal plant at the site in its last five years of operation. Knighthead Capital said it had a significant equity position in the former coal-fired plant.
Knighthead, which says it manages assets across a variety of investment vehicles including real estate, said its overall commitment to the power plant project represents the largest private capital investment in Pennsylvania history.
Pipeline opposition
The state Department of Environmental Protection’s regional office in Meadville has said it made a tentative decision to issue a permit to Homer City Redevelopment for stormwater discharge caused by the construction of the 5.8-mile-long steel natural gas pipeline from an interconnection facility on Marco Road in Burrell Township to the proposed plant on Power Plant Road.
The 30-inch-diameter pipeline will require 10 temporary road crossings of streams, floodways and wetlands, and 24 crossings located within streams, wetlands and floodways, according to the DEP description of the project. Muddy Run, Blacklick Creek and various unnamed tributaries to those streams would be impacted. The project, which will disturb 101 acres, was designed to avoid and minimize impacts to wetlands, streams and floodways to the maximum extent practical, the DEP stated.
The agency will accept more comments on the documentation and plans for the pipeline permit application during a hearing from 5 to 7 p.m. May 12 at Indiana Theatre, 637 Philadelphia St., Indiana. The state determined the application was administratively complete in November, and written comments were received and reviewed.
“It’s really important for what has a big impact on the community, to give those people a chance to show up and ask questions,” said Jessica O’Neill, managing attorney for litigation for PennFuture, a statewide environmental organization.
The state said it would review only comments at the hearing that pertain to the pipeline permit application.
PennFuture also wants the state to require additional protections during construction to ensure water quality standards are met on a pipeline that will cross 21 streams designated as cold-water fisheries, said Annie Regan, the organization’s campaigns manager.
The state could set conditions for Homer City Redevelopment to meet to get approval of the permit, O’Neill said.
PennFuture wants environmental regulators to require Homer City Redevelopment to conduct more studies, including at the watershed level, to ensure the pipeline will not cause thermal pollution, increase silt in the streams or destabilize the slope of the creeks the pipeline crosses.
A spokesperson for Concerned Residents of Western PA, another opponent of the pipeline project and the power plant, could not be reached for comment.