OVEC has invested over $2 billion to protect our environment and comply with applicable state and federal environmental regulations.
The company has invested in a variety of air emission control systems to reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from our power plant operations to comply with the federal Clean Air Act. To date, over $1.6 billion has been devoted to reducing these flue-gas emissions. By completing the recent investment in wet jet bubbling reactor (JBR) scrubbers for all units, OVEC has also been able to successfully reduce mercury, acid aerosols, and particulate emissions for compliance with the Mercury Air Toxics Rule (MATS).
During the period of 1995 through 1999, OVEC completed overfire air (OFA) modifications on all eleven generating units at a cost of $8.2 million. OFA reduces the formation of NOx in the boilers by up to 60 percent.
In 2002 and 2003, OVEC invested $355 million to retrofit ten of the eleven OVEC units with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems. The SCR systems were designed to further reduce NOx emissions by up to 90 percent.
Between November 2011 and May 2013, four JBR scrubber systems began operation. The placement of the last scrubber in May 2013 completed an overall company investment of approximately $1.3 billion, which included the installation of JBRs on 2,389.86 megawatts of coal-fired generation at both Kyger Creek and Clifty Creek Stations, new landfills at each plant to manage the disposal of coal combustion by-products that are not otherwise beneficially reused, and new wastewater treatment systems for the treatment of residual wastewater generated from the JBR scrubbers. The scrubbers have the ability to reduce SO2 emissions from the fuel used at each plant by up to 98 percent.
OVEC is a proponent of the beneficial reuse of coal combustion residuals and the by-products created by both the generation of electricity and plant environmental control processes.
OVEC is a member of The Ohio River Ecological Research Program (ORERP), which is an ongoing multi-year project with the objective of developing a quantitative and qualitative database for the evaluation of power plant impacts on fish and fish communities. Through ORERP, OVEC has been dedicated to monitoring water quality by participating in several studies that illustrate that a balanced, indigenous population of fish and shellfish exist in the Ohio River in and around our power plant discharges.
If you would like to know more about plant-specific environmental activities, please follow the links below: Clifty Creek Environmental: Click Here Kyger Creek Environmental: Click Here