Two Japanese companies have invested in the $600 million Birdsboro Power plant that is being built on a former steel mill site in the borough.
Tokyo Gas America Ltd. and Sojitz Corp. each acquired 33.33 percent equity in the natural gas and steam-fired plant under construction on the 50-acre brownfield.
While Sojitz has invested in power plants around the world, Birdsboro is its first in North America, according to Sojitz’s website.
Birdsboro Power is owned by Ares Management LP, a global alternative asset management group based in Los Angeles. A fund managed by the Ares EIF Group, which invests in U.S. power and energy infrastructure, closed the deals with Tokyo Gas America and Sojitz Corp. in February and March.
The Birdsboro project’s developer, EmberClear Corp., an energy company based in Houston, also built the gas-fired power plant in Good Spring, Schuylkill County, in 2012, its first in North America.
Ares and EmberClear have been capitalizing on the abundance of gas extracted from fracking Marcellus shale in the region.
The Birdsboro plant will generate up to 485 megawatts of electricity using a combustion turbine and a heat recovery steam generator that will provide steam to drive a steam turbine generator.
The plant, which is scheduled to begin commercial operations in 2019, is expected to create 300 construction jobs and 25 permanent jobs, according to EmberClear’s website.
Once completed, the plant is expected to sell electricity to 13 states in North America’s largest wholesale electricity market.
A six-mile water pipe was built so that Reading and Birdsboro could provide water for the plant.
The site once was home to the Birdsboro Steel Foundry and Machine Co., later Armorcast, which built Sherman and Patton tanks. The plant closed in 1988.
Kiewit, of Omaha, Neb., is the engineering, procurement and construction contractor.
“We are excited to be moving forward on this project, which once again demonstrates how private sector infrastructure investors can create jobs, clean up an old, dirty site and reinvigorate the economy,” Ben Pike, a vice president at Ares EIF, said in a news release.
