Maryland-based Competitive Power Ventures Inc. (CPV) will proceed with plans for a 1,040 MW natural gas-fired power plant in Cambria County, PA, next week when company officials and state regulators gather there for a public hearing about the facility.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said this week that it would host the public hearing on June 21 in Jackson Township, where the plant would be located. Residents and stakeholders can ask questions and give testimony about the facility. The comments would be considered in its decision to issue the plant’s air quality plan approval, DEP said.

CPV wants to build the facility on a former 87-acre salvage yard in Cambria County in central Pennsylvania. The proposed location is about one mile south of the Texas Eastern pipeline, which would supply the combined-cycle plant with natural gas. If built, the facility would be able to provide enough electricity for about one million homes in the PJM Interconnection market.

Emissions from the combustion turbines and heat recovery generators, DEP said, would be minimized through the installation of selective catalytic reduction and oxidation catalyst emission controls. CPV has said that it has filed for all the necessary permits and the project’s timeline remains on track. Construction is expected to begin in early 2017, with start-up planned for 2019.

CPV officials and state regulators plan to make brief presentations at the public hearing before the state takes testimony. The facility is one of dozens that have been proposed or approved in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia as coal-fired power plant retirements and increasing production from the Marcellus and Utica shales have sparked demand for them (see Daily GPI, May 13).

CPV focuses on natural gas and wind power generation. It has more than 8,300 MW of natural gas-fired generation under development, 1,400 MW under construction and another 800 MW in operation across North America.

The Jackson Township plant, called the CPV Fairview Energy Center, would be about 20 miles away from another site in the county where Greensburg, PA-based Keytex Energy hopes to build another natural gas-fired power plant (see Daily GPI, May 10).