Brunner Island Plant

PPL Corporation plans to increase its investment in pollution control equipment over the next five years, adding a “scrubber” for two additional generating units at its Brunner Island Power Plant in York County.

This project, in addition to another scrubber for the plant announced in February, will mean that all three units at the plant will have scrubbers.

When the scrubber project is complete, all of PPL’s major coal-fired generating units will have scrubbers, nearly eliminating sulfur dioxide emissions while improving plant competitiveness.

The scrubbers will remove nearly all of the sulfur dioxide emitted when coal is burned to generate electricity. Besides this significant reduction in emissions, the scrubbers will also create jobs and improve the competitiveness of plants where they are installed.

The Brunner Island scrubbers, when added to other scrubber projects announced in February and other planned environmental expenditures, mean that PPL will be investing an estimated $1.5 billion in environmental projects between now and 2010.

The projects will improve the plant’s competitiveness, because the cost of installing scrubbers is less than the anticipated future cost of buying the emission allowances that would be required to operate the plant without scrubbers.

Since 1990, while demand for electricity has increased significantly, the company’s power plants have cut their nitrogen oxide emissions rate by 66 percent, their sulfur dioxide emissions rate by 43 percent and their carbon dioxide emissions rate by 8 percent.

For more information on PPL and the environment, visit the Project Earth webpage.

NewsClip: 2 More PPL Units to Get Scrubbers

8/12/2005