Billions in Private Capital Are Backing a Massive New Fracked-Gas Plant. A New Nonprofit Is Funding a Legal Counterweight.
A firm founded by President Trump’s son-in-law is among the investors behind the massive Pennsylvania project. WHEN Justice is inviting the public to help fund the expert witnesses needed for the challenge to its air permit.
HOMER CITY, Pa. — [DATE] — The community around Homer City spent more than half a century beside a coal plant that was once the largest source of sulfur dioxide pollution in the United States. Now, the same site is being redeveloped into one of the largest fracked-gas power plants ever proposed in the U.S.
At 4.5 GW, the plant could generate enough electricity to power more than three million homes, but it’s being built primarily to supply a 3,200-acre AI data center campus. It would emit up to 17.5 million tons of greenhouse gases and up to 840 tons of fine particulate matter each year. Beyond their climate and environmental impacts, the plant’s emissions also carry risks for human health since fine particulate matter can penetrate deep into the lungs and is linked to asthma, cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, and other serious health effects.
“There’s a lot at risk for our community – our air, our water,” an Indiana County resident and farmer told WHEN Justice.
The redevelopment project’s scale is extraordinary. The risks to the environment and local community are significant. And with billions in capital from major investment firms behind it, so are the financial stakes.
“There’s a lot at risk for our community – our air, our water”
Whether the project’s promised benefits justify its potential costs is now part of a legal challenge to its air permit. The environmental groups bringing the appeal are supported in part by a new nonprofit, WHEN Justice, which is inviting the public to help fund the experts needed to strengthen the case.
The Money Behind Homer City
The capital behind the redevelopment starts with Knighthead Capital Management, a New York investment firm that has held significant equity positions in Homer City for years and is leading the project’s financing. The firm specializes in distressed investments and turnarounds, including investments in Hertz during its bankruptcy restructuring and Birmingham City Football Club, where Knighthead co-founder Tom Wagner now serves as chairman.
Wagner once described the strategy vividly: “We look at a business that might be a carcass and say, can we revive that thing?”
Homer City is now one of Knighthead’s bets. More than $10 billion in investment is planned for power generation, with billions more expected as the data center campus is developed. At a Pennsylvania energy summit in July 2025, President Donald Trump highlighted the scale of Knighthead’s involvement, publicly touting what he called a “$15 billion investment from Knighthead Capital Management” in Homer City.
Knighthead is no longer the only high-profile investment firm involved. In July 2026, financial journalist Miles Weiss reported that Affinity Partners, the investment firm founded by Jared Kushner, had acquired an equity stake in Homer City Holdings, the parent company behind the redevelopment. According to the report, the investment surfaced through a June regulatory filing by an Affinity affiliate.
Private capital isn’t the project’s only source of funding. Pennsylvania awarded Homer City Redevelopment a $5 million state grant to help build an interconnection between the plant and the fracked-gas pipeline that would supply it.
The Air Permit Under Challenge
Developers say the project will bring substantial economic benefits to the region, including thousands of construction jobs and roughly 1,000 direct and indirect permanent positions. They also say the new gas turbines would emit approximately 60 to 65 percent less carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour than the former coal plant.
But greater efficiency does not necessarily mean less pollution overall. Given the scale of the new plant, Clean Air Council estimates it could emit roughly three times more carbon dioxide annually than Pennsylvania’s highest-emitting individual facility today.
In December 2025, Clean Air Council, PennFuture, and Sierra Club appealed the project’s air permit, arguing that Pennsylvania regulators relied on flawed emissions analyses, improperly evaluated the power plant separately from the broader AI development it is intended to serve, and failed to adequately account for the project’s environmental, public-health, and climate consequences.
The groups are asking the Environmental Hearing Board to stop the gas plant from moving forward under its current approval. The existing permit is backed by extensive technical analysis submitted by the project developers and reviewed by specialists at Pennsylvania DEP. Challenging those conclusions in an effort to overturn or strengthen the permit requires comparable expertise, and the resources to pay for it.
Funding the Experts
WHEN Justice is helping fund experts in four areas critical to the Homer City appeal: air quality, climate impacts, public health, and data center economics. The nonprofit draws on multiple sources of capital, including crowdfunding that allows individuals to pool their resources behind the facts, science, and expertise needed to stand up in court.
“We’re really trying to level the playing field and make sure that justice isn’t just about who can afford the best experts,” said Jacqueline Biner, Chief Executive & Legal Officer of WHEN Justice.
The campaign is seeking $200,000 – a fraction of the billions behind the project, but targeted at a critical point of leverage: ensuring the claims and assumptions underlying the permit can be rigorously tested.
“We’re really trying to level the playing field and make sure that justice isn’t just about who can afford the best experts.”
For Homer City, the proceeding will help determine what replaces a plant that shaped the region for generations: what gets built, how much it can pollute, and whether the people who live beside it have the resources to challenge the assumptions on which that decision rests.
Support the Homer City appeal: https://www.whenjustice.org/campaigns/halting-the-nation-s-largest-proposed-fracked-gas-power-plant-88b93abe-b37e-4d6f-b38f-2a7896896c84
Sources
- Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Homer City Generation Site Redevelopment; Homer City Redevelopment project materials. DEP identifies the former facility as a decommissioned 2-GW coal plant; project materials describe the approximately 3,200-acre redevelopment and planned gas generation.
- Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Final Plan Approval 32-00457A, issued Nov. 18, 2025, pp. 21–22. The permit establishes facility-wide annual limits including 17,551,454 tons CO2e, 1,142.8 tons NOx and 840.02 tons PM2.5.
- Clean Air Council, Clean Air Council, PennFuture, and Sierra Club Appeal Air Pollution Permit for Nation’s Largest Proposed Fracked Gas Power Plant for Homer City Data Center, Dec. 18, 2025; Utility Dive, Ethan Howland, Largest US gas-fired power plant planned for data centers in Pennsylvania, Apr. 3, 2025.
- Knighthead Capital Management, Profile, Strategy and Team. Knighthead describes itself as a diversified asset-management platform specializing in fundamental analysis, operational and financial turnarounds and risk management; its strategies include distressed credit and special situations.
- Tom Wagner, Knighthead Capital Management, remarks in Bloomberg/Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business, 2023. The quoted passage describes Knighthead’s approach to distressed businesses and turnarounds.
- Homer City Redevelopment/Kiewit announcement, Apr. 2, 2025; Utility Dive, Apr. 3, 2025. The developers described initial capital investment exceeding $10 billion for power infrastructure and site readiness, with additional data-center investment anticipated.
- President Donald Trump, remarks at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, July 15, 2025, describing a “$15 billion investment from Knighthead Capital Management.” Contemporary reporting likewise characterized the announcement as a $15 billion Knighthead investment. This is Trump’s characterization; Homer City’s own announced initial capital-investment figure was $10 billion-plus.
- Miles Weiss, Deadline Disclosures, Kushner’s Affinity Takes Stake in Multibillion-Dollar Power Project Extolled by Trump, July 13, 2026. Weiss reported that an Affinity affiliate disclosed an equity interest in Homer City Holdings and reported Kushner’s earlier visit to Indiana County.
- Utility Dive, Apr. 3, 2025, reporting a $5 million Pennsylvania grant supporting construction of the natural-gas pipeline interconnection.
- Homer City Generation, Homer City Generation Receives Air Quality Plan Approval from PA DEP, Nov. 2025; POWER Magazine and Utility Dive coverage of the developers’ project announcement. These are developer-stated economic and emissions-intensity benefits.
- Earthjustice, One of the Nation’s Dirtiest Power Plants to Clean Up Sulfur Dioxide Emissions, May 29, 2013. Earthjustice reported that Homer City emitted more than 109,000 tons of SO2 in 2010 and was the nation’s largest source that year; it also reported DEP’s finding that Indiana County violated the SO2 health standard.
- Clean Air Council, Dec. 18, 2025. The organizations’ release summarizes their legal claims and states that EPA COBRA modeling indicates the plant’s conventional air pollution could cause dozens of premature deaths nationally per operating year. These are the challengers’ allegations and estimates, not findings by the Environmental Hearing Board.