Por Jim Murphy, President and Co-Founder, Invenergy
Apr 01, 2025
Linhas elétricas
Natural gas: A core component of Invenergy’s energy mix
Por Jim Murphy, President and Co-Founder, Invenergy
For over 20 years, Invenergy has led the industry in delivering cleaner, more affordable, and reliable, energy solutions. Today, Invenergy continues building on our track record of innovation to address a formidable challenge – the imminent national electricity deficit. To meet historic U.S. electricity demand and strengthen American energy independence, we need all American energy sources, including natural gas.
Natural gas is a useful asset in the multi-technology generation mix - providing additional, dispatchable energy to meet the electricity needs of consumers. At Invenergy, our comprehensive development strategy includes a growing pipeline of gas development across the United States. Just this month, Invenergy announced its 15th natural gas project, Foundry Ridge in Wisconsin, and the company just received an air permit for its Sycamore Riverside Energy Center in Sullivan County, Indiana.
A legacy of natural gas generation
Invenergy’s natural gas portfolio began 22 years ago, when the company acquired Hardee Power Station, a 370 megawatt natural gas facility in Florida. Today, this facility continues to generate and deliver reliable power to Americans. Since then, Invenergy has developed more than 200 projects across five technologies. Thirteen of these projects are operational natural gas facilities, totaling 6 gigawatts of power, almost 20% of Invenergy’s developed generation capacity.
Invenergy’s current portfolio includes two types of gas facilities:
Fast-start peaking plants, which provide essential, dispatchable energy that can respond quickly to demand fluctuations. Able to ramp up or down quickly, this technology serves as an additional reliability backstop.
Combined-cycle plants which offer a stable and highly efficient energy generation solution for baseload power, helping to diversify our power grid. This includes natural gas plants that use LNG as their primary source – like Invenergy’s Energía del Pacífico project, which provides nearly 30% of El Salvador’s total energy demand.
Transmission is the energy highway
However, meeting our nation’s increasing electricity demand will require more than generation alone. The critical missing link is our outdated electricity grid. We urgently need to build out interregional transmission infrastructure to move all forms of energy - including natural gas, solar, wind, and geothermal - from where it is generated to where it's needed. We also need to build out interregional transmission to keep energy affordable and the grid reliable.
Transmission infrastructure is the energy superhighway transporting electricity generated from any power source, keeping Americans’ lights on and electricity bills low. As customer demands evolve, Invenergy is actively evaluating sites for gas projects that could connect to Grain Belt Express – adding yet another generation source to this critical interregional transmission line to help meet growing demand with American-made energy.
Sullivan County, Indiana, exemplifies America’s potential and Invenergy’s vision for an all-of-the-above future. This county will host Invenergy’s Sycamore Riverside natural gas facility; will be home to the East terminus of Invenergy’s Grain Belt Express (the largest transmission infrastructure project in U.S. history); and boasts two Invenergy-developed solar facilities. This is how we unleash American energy dominance, meet our growing power demands, and reinforce reliability. These Invenergy projects in Sullivan County alone will generate 1,380 megawatts of power and over $400 million in local economic benefits, prioritizing local hiring with more than 700 construction jobs and 30 permanent good-paying jobs.
We agree that Americans are facing an electricity emergency. We need to activate every American energy source and modernize the grid, which includes interregional transmission buildout to transport the energy across the country. This is the only way to ensure that consumers and businesses can access reliable and affordable energy when they need it most.