
Potential Gavin owner Energy Capital Partners won’t retire plant
January 14, 2025
Energy Capital Partners (ECP) is a subsidiary of private equity firm Bridgepoint currently seeking regulatory approval to acquire the 50-year-old James M. Gavin Power Plant, one of the highest emitting, dirtiest and deadliest coal-fired power plants in the United States. On January 6, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) staff filed a letter of deficiency related to disclosures on coal supply in the proceeding to approve the transaction, indicating discrepancies and issues in ECP’s application. ECP must address these issues with FERC within 30 days.
Contrary to energy transition claims, Bridgepoint-owned ECP has stated that it does not intend to retire the coal plant.
According to filings made on December 23, 2024, and reported on by the Ohio Capital Journal, it is clear that ECP does not currently intend to retire the Gavin coal plant, despite claims of leading the clean energy transition from Bridgepoint and ECP. In a 2024 regulatory filing, Bridgepoint called ECP “a leading North American infrastructure investor specialising in energy transition and sustainability-focused investing.”
PESP was quoted in the above OCJ article:
“Whether owned by Blackstone or ECP, every day that private equity firms continue to operate the deadly Gavin coal plant is another day that private equity executives are choosing to put communities at greater health risk,” Alissa Jean Schafer, Climate Director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project said in a statement. “Gavin is one of the worst polluting power plants in the nation, and as emission plumes travel downwind, these negative health impacts reach far beyond Ohio. How many more premature deaths will be linked to Gavin before this plant is shut down?”
PESP previously shared information about these updates on our website and via email. For convenient reference, here is that previous update:
In a recent filing with the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Energy Capital Partners pledged to keep operating 50-year-old, heavily polluting coal plant indefinitely, stating “ECP and Javelin expect that the Gavin facility (and the facilities owned by the other Lightstone Public Utilities) will continue to operate for so long as they are legally able to do so on an economic basis.”
The firm added, “regarding a secondhand, unnamed source’s speculation regarding plans to retire the Gavin facility, ECP and Javelin confirm that there are no such plans.”
The Gavin Power Plant emitted 14.7 million tons of CO2 last year, making it one of the highest emitting power plants in the US. The plume of toxins emitted by the plant have major public health impacts because it is upwind of major metropolitan areas across the eastern US. Modeling by the Sierra Club found Gavin to be the nation’s deadliest coal plant, causing an estimated 244 premature deaths each year from particulate emissions.
The Private Equity Stakeholder Project and the Sierra Club in September sent a letter to Bridgepoint and ECP asking that prior to closing the acquisition, Bridgepoint and Energy Capital Partners commit to retire the Gavin Power Plant by no later than 2028. Bridgepoint’s September 2023 announcement of its acquisition of Energy Capital Partners noted that ECP “operates across North America in an expanding subsegment of infrastructure investing which stands to be a key contributor to and beneficiary of the global decarbonisation effort…”
Bridgepoint’s September 2023 presentation called ECP “A market-leader in electrification, decarbonisation and sustainability-focused added value investing.”
Yet just weeks after Bridgepoint’s acquisition of Energy Capital Partners closed, ECP entered into an agreement to acquire one of the highest emitting coal-fired power plants in the US.
The General J Gavin Coal Plant is an outlier among other similar coal plants slated for closure. The Gavin Coal plant turns 50 this year, and now operates on borrowed time. Since 2000, the average age for retirement of coal-fired generating units has been 50 years. Experts broadly agree that as coal-fired power plants age, operation and maintenance expenses increase while performance decreases.
The 2024 Private Equity Climate Risks Scorecard, released in October, noted that Energy Capital Partners, which owns over 60 gas-fired power plants, is ranked among worst greenhouse gas (GHG) polluters by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Greenhouse 100 Polluters Index. These gas plants alone are responsible for an estimated 46.5 million metric tons of CO2e annually.
PESP asks that investors reach out to Bridgepoint Group/Energy Capital Partners and ask the firm to commit to retire the Gavin Power Plant prior to closing its acquisition of Lightstone Holdco.
