{"id":84859,"date":"2026-01-12T19:47:35","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T19:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/84859\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T19:47:35","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T19:47:35","slug":"bethlehem-power-plant-officially-under-new-ownership-lehigh-valley-regional-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/84859\/","title":{"rendered":"Bethlehem power plant officially under new ownership | Lehigh Valley Regional News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BALTIMORE, Md.- A power plant in Bethlehem is officially under new ownership. It will change hands again before the end of the year, by order of the federal government.<\/p>\n<p>Last week,\u00a0Constellation completed its $26.6 billion acquisition of Calpine Corporation from Energy Capital Partners (ECP). The combined company is now the largest wholesale power generator in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Among the assets now under Constellation&#8217;s umbrella is\u00a0Calpine&#8217;s Bethlehem Energy Center, a natural gas combined cycle plant at 2254 Applebutter Road that opened in 2003. But Constellation will divest the plant later in 2026, in accordance with a settlement with the\u00a0U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).<\/p>\n<p>The DOJ&#8217;s Antitrust Division told Constellation the merger would not be approved unless the company parted ways with a total of six power plants\u00a0in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Texas.\u00a0The DOJ initially filed a civil lawsuit to block the deal, citing concerns about higher prices for consumers who use Texas&#8217;s ERCOT electricity grid, as well as those who rely on PJM Interconnection, which manages the electric grid for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and 11 other states and the District of Columbia.<\/p>\n<p>The DOJ said its proposed settlement resolved those concerns.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for Constellation told 69 News the divestitures haven&#8217;t happened yet, but the company anticipates unloading all of the plants by the end of year. For now, Constellation and Calpine will continue to operate Bethlehem Energy Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Constellation, with headquarters in Baltimore, Md., can claim 55 gigawatts of capacity from its nuclear, natural gas, geothermal, hydro, wind and solar facilities. According to the company, that&#8217;s enough generation to power the equivalent of 27 million homes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BALTIMORE, Md.- A power plant in Bethlehem is officially under new ownership. It will change hands again before&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[42434,8936,153,155,154,42436,42437,42435,28,11424],"class_list":["post-84859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-a-power-plant","tag-baltimore","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-power-plant","tag-doj","tag-natural-gas-combined-cycle-plant","tag-pennsylvania","tag-u-s-department-of-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}