You know that America needs tradesmen to power its future. And nowhere are tradespeople being put to greater use today than in the many endeavors aimed at building artificial intelligence data centers and the power plants and equipment that make them work. The best example of this trend is in Homer City, PA, where a natural gas power plant is under construction that will be the largest in the country once completed.
In The Washington Examiner, Salena Zito explains just how many people are working on the plant, writing:
Eighteen months ago, Shawn Steffee stood in a field in Indiana County and watched the smokestacks of Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired power plant fold into a cloud of dust, then told anyone who would listen that the wreckage was not a funeral.
“This isn’t the end, this is the beginning,” said the business agent for Boilermakers Local 154.
This Labor Day, that prediction is unfolding.
Homer City Generation announced Friday morning that more than 1,800 direct-hire tradespeople and skilled contractors are currently working at the site of the largest natural gas-powered plant currently under construction in the United States.
Those workers are from nine local union organizations. Roughly 95% of them are local. More than 135 are apprentices and learning the trade at the elbow of journeymen. By New Year’s Day, the company expects 2,000.
Watch how fast that curve moves. When I first walked this property last spring, the count was 1,000, and the steel had not gone vertical. By May of this year, that number had hit nearly 1,300.
Over the life of the project, the company projects more than 10,000 construction jobs and about 1,000 permanent positions.
They are boilermakers, carpenters, electricians, ironworkers, laborers, millwrights, operators, pipefitters, and teamsters — all the same trades that their fathers worked when the coal plant ran three shifts here. And now all are able to stay close to their families, close to the woods they hunt and the streams they fish, and still have good-paying jobs.
That’s a lot of jobs for skilled tradesmen. Homer City Redevelopment explains the plan for the site, writing:
Homer City will be transformed from a decommissioned coal power plant into a more than 3,200-acre campus that will include natural gas-powered data-centers designed to meet the growing artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) needs of the innovative technology companies shaping America’s digital future.
GE Vernova will provide seven high efficiency 7HA.02 hydrogen-enabled, gas-fired turbines, with the first deliveries expected to begin in 2026. The Homer City Energy Campus will be built by Kiewit Power Constructors Co., one of the leading engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractors in the country.
Building on Homer City’s place in the proud history of Pennsylvania energy generation, the new Homer City Energy Campus will become the largest natural gas-powered plant in the country and will have capacity to serve multiple large data center customers and supply power to thousands of homes on the local grid.
Key attributes and benefits of the project are expected to include:
- Delivery of up to 4.4 gigawatts (GW) of power to support AI-driven hyperscale data centers, while reducing CO2 emissions by 60–65% per megawatt hour compared to the former coal plant.
- Creation of more than 10,000 direct on-site construction-related jobs* along with approximately 1,000 total direct and indirect permanent high-paying positions** in technology, operations and energy infrastructure.
Establishing an Innovative Data Center Campus and Accelerating Pennsylvania’s Digital Future
Data centers are critical to supporting America’s economic and energy growth by powering businesses and enabling continued leadership in innovation. Data center deployment, partly driven by the need to power new AI applications, is a significant factor in the current surge of electricity demand growth throughout the U.S. as the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) estimates that data centers could grow to consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation annually by 2030, up from 4% in 2023.***
Accelerating the deployment of electricity generation will be critical to support these growing power demands reliably while also limiting CO2 emissions.
HCR is helping to address this need through its plans to deliver up to 4.4 GW of power to support AI-driven hyperscale data centers and local homes while reducing CO2 emissions by 60-65% per MWh compared to the decommissioned coal-burning Homer City Generating Station.
Action Line: Americans are working hard to build the future, and skilled tradespeople are at the forefront. In recognition of that hard work, read Mike Rowe’s S.W.E.A.T. Pledge here. And click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter.
