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Brookfield and Google Sign Nationwide Hydro Framework Agreement to Deliver up to 3,000 MW of Carbon-Free Hydro Power

LCG, July 16, 2025--Brookfield Asset Management (BAM), together with Brookfield Renewable (Brookfield) and Google yesterday announced a first-of-its-kind Hydro Framework Agreement (HFA) to deliver up to 3,000 MW of carbon-free hydroelectric capacity across the nation

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The Frontier Group of Companies Announces Plans to Convert Retired 2.7-GW Coal-fired Plant into 3.6-GW Natural Gas-fired Facility in Pennsylvania

LCG, July 15, 2025--The Frontier Group of Companies (“FGC”), owner and developer of the 660-acre Shippingport Industrial Park in Pennsylvania, today announced that it will convert the former coal-fired Bruce Mansfield Power Plant, which was closed in 2019, into a significantly larger, state-of-the-art, natural gas-fired power generation facility with greater on-site generation capacity. FGC has also secured a partner to build a co-located data center facility to support America’s demand for AI infrastructure.

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Industry News

Kiwi Mercury Energy to Get into Gas

LCG, Dec. 18, 2001--New Zealand electric utility Mercury Energy Ltd. is moving into the natural gas retail market and will start selling gas to many of its Auckland customers from March, the New Zealand Herald reported this morning.

John Foote, Mercury's general manager, told the paper that customers would have the option of paying for both electricity and gas on the same bill. The move would put Mercury, which is now a unit of the state-owned enterprise Mighty River Power, into direct competition with Contact Energy, also a gas and electricity retailer.

Mercury Energy may be remembered as the electric distribution company that, for lack of preventive maintenance, allowed electric transmission into Auckland's central business district to fail on Feb. 19, 1998. More than a month later, the company proudly announced "The power crisis is over, normal power is up and running in Auckland's CBD."

Then the lights went out again.

This latest move would involve the acquisition by Mercury of Wanganui Gas, which supplies gas to big commercial users in Auckland. That company's general manager, Trevor Goodwin, said the small firm was not interested in selling gas directly to Auckland residential customers.

"We really just want to sell more gas," he said. "We're not megalomaniacs, we're not trying to have the largest customer base in the country, we just want to shift more gas."

The service territory in which Mercury will initially sell gas has about 40,000 gas users, almost all buying from Contact Energy. The company will aim to win over Contact gas customers who already buy electricity from Mercury.

"We plan this to be a low-hassle, good-service option, so we'll be moving at a pace to ensure that this service can be maintained," said Foote. "Ultimately, we want to be able to offer these sorts of things wherever the Mercury brand is but, for the moment, one step at a time."

Selling Mercury as a "low-hassle, good-service" energy provider would seem to require a customer base having collectively a short memory.

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