PA Environmental Hearing Board sets August hearing in environmentalists’ challenge to Renovo Energy Center project

HARRISBURG, PA – The state Environmental Hearing Board on Thursday set an August hearing date for Clean Air Council, Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future and Center for Biological Diversity in their challenge to Renovo Energy Center and its billion dollar natural gas-to-electricity facility proposed for Renovo’s north side.

The hearing is between the several environmental groups opposed to the project and the state Department of Environmental Protection and the project permittee, Renovo Energy Center , LLC. The three-page hearing board order was signed by Judge Bernard A. Labuskes, Jr. It sets Aug. 23-25 and Sept. 13-15 and Sept. 18-22 “until completed” for the hearing. It will be held in the hearing board offices on Market St. in Harrisburg. A by-phone pre-hearing conference is scheduled for Aug. 17.

Earlier this month in a five-page opinion and order signed by Judge Labuskes, the state board denied discovery requests from the environmental groups. Those groups are challenging the air quality plan approval issued by the state Department of Environmental Protection to Renovo Energy Center. The plan approval would allow the construction of a 1,240 megawatt two-unit electric power plant at the old railyard yard acreage in Renovo.

Clean Air Council, PennFuture, and the Center for Biological Diversity in November had appealed an October 2022 DEP extension of Renovo Energy Center’s air pollution permit for the gas-fired power plant. That DEP extension allows the power plant developer an additional 18 months, through April 27, 2024, to build the power plant. DEP originally permitted the plant in April 2021.

Plans for the billion-dollar energy plant were first disclosed in 2014.