Ohio State University Power Station

The Ohio State University McCracken Power Plant is a coal-fired steam plant and chilled water plant located just west of the OSU campus in Columbus, Ohio. It supplies about 85 percent of the non-electric heat to campus.

History
The original OSU power plant was completed in September 1918. It was later enlarged four times (1923, 1929, 1959, 1962). The structure was named to honor OSU chief engineer and superintendent William C. McCracken in 1960, a year after his death at age 96.

In 2001, the McCracken Power Plant switched from natural gas to coal and oil. Natural gas costs were skyrocketing at the time, and the university moved back to coal to save money. In 2007 it switched back to natural gas to meet environmental regulations.

In 2012, Ohio State University signed a 20-year purchase agreement with a northwestern Ohio wind farm - Blue Creek Wind Farm in Van Wert and Paulding counties - to provide enough energy to meet as much as 25 percent of the Columbus campus’ electrical needs.

Plant Data

 * Owner: Ohio State University
 * Parent Company:
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 * Units and In-Service Dates:
 * Location: Columbus, OH
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 * Electricity Production:
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 * Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

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 * SO2 Emissions per MWh:
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External Resources

 * Existing Electric Generating Units in the United States, 2005, Energy Information Administration, accessed Jan. 2009.
 * Environmental Integrity Project, "Dirty Kilowatts: America’s Most Polluting Power Plants", July 2007.
 * Facility Registry System, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, accessed Jan. 2009.
 * Carbon Monitoring for Action database, accessed Feb. 2009.
 * NETL Coal Power Plant Database, National Energy Technology Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy, 2007.
 * AirData Query Database, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, accessed April 2009.

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Campus coal plants
 * Existing U.S. Coal Plants
 * Ohio and coal
 * United States and coal
 * Global warming