By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
“The Ridgeline Facility will continue to move forward,” Fundamental Data’s Casey Chapman wrote in a letter to the U.S. Senate.
Chapman has issued a formal response to a request by the United States Committee on Environmental and Public Works in March. The request, issued in a letter dated March 13th and addressed to Chapman at the company’s Purcellville, VA offices, was replied in a letter by the company dated March 27th, addressed to “The Honorable Sheldon Whitehouse, Ranking Member, Committee on Environmental and Public Works, United States Senate, Washington, DC 20510.” In the letter, Chapman addresses the concerns raised by the Committee members in their March 13th letter to the company.
“What we are building in West Virginia matters, to the state, to the nation, and to the industries and institutions that will depend on it. The intersection of energy infrastructure and advanced technology is one of the defining challenges of our time, and the decisions made in this decade will shape whether America leads or follows in that contest. We take that responsibility seriously,” the letter states.
Chapman said that several of the statements in the letter were “inconsistent with the documented, publicly available record on Ridgeline.” The letter goes on to explain that the company writes to explain what Ridgeline is and offer a better understanding of the project and what it is designed for.
The first point the letter makes is in reference to the Ridgeline Project’s Air Quality Permit No. R13-3713. The permit was issued by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Department of Air Quality, in accordance with West Virginia Air Pollution Control Act and applicable federal law, the letter states.
“That permit was subjected to a full public comment process and survived an appeal before the West Virginia Air Quality Board. It is a public document that establishes specific, legally enforceable limits on every regulated pollutant Ridgeline’s gas generating facility is authorized to emit and imposes detailed requirements governing equipment specifications, control technology, operations, monitoring, performance testing, and reporting,” the letter states.
The letter further states that the permit “establishes the compliance obligations applicable to what has been approved to date” and advises the committee to review “this publicly available permit,” as it would answer many of the questions raised in the letter and “note that the permit record for this phase of the Ridgeline Facility was publicly available before your letter was written.” While, simultaneously, stating that Congressional oversight of energy and environmental matters “is both appropriate and important, and we welcome it.”
To the allegation that the Ridgeline Facility would “emit thousands of tons of health-harming local pollutants” each year, the letter disputes the claim by the Committee. The letter states the specific limits of several examples such as: “the maximum annual limit for nitrogen oxides is 99.35 tons per year; for particulate matter, 71.44 tons per year; for sulfur dioxide, 58.89 tons per year; for volatile organic compounds, 43.84 tons per year; and for total hazardous air pollutants, the category that encompasses any benzene emissions, 9.33 tons per year in aggregate.”
“These are not projections or estimates. They are maximum annual limits established by the permit and enforceable by the WVDEP.,” the letter states.
As for the subject of benzene addressed by the letters, the Fundamental Data letter states that benzene is not regarded as a “standalone regulated pollutant in our permit.” As such, the letter said, it would fall under the Total Hazardous Air Pollutants category which has a maximum annual limit of 9.33 tons per year in aggregate across all hazardous air pollutants.
“Citing benzene as a distinct and specific threat to our neighbors, without reference to the actual permitted emissions profile of this facility, is not an accurate representation of the project,” the letter states.
The letter then addresses the assertion that the facility would produce “millions of tons of greenhouse gases every year” with a footnote citing a January 2026 article. The letter claims the article projected the lifetime emissions across every gas project currently under development in the U.S. and further asserted the figures were not derived from analysis of the specific Ridgeline Project itself.
“Applying a national aggregate statistic to a single specific facility (one with a defined permit imposing defined operating limits for air pollutants) does not reflect the actual facts of this project,” the letter stated.
The facility will operated with the installation and operation of “Selective Catalytic Reduction systems,” the letter rebutted to the assertion that the facility would operate without meaningful pollution controls. The systems would have a system on every turbine to monitor nitrogen oxide control and a CO catalyst system for carbon monoxide control on each, as well, the letter stated.
“These are best-available control technologies and required conditions of our permit, not voluntary commitments. We are legally obligated to install them, operate them, and maintain them in accordance with manufacturer specifications. The WVDEP and U.S. EPA have authority to enforce those obligations,” the letter states.
The facility will operate combustion turbines with Heat Recovery Steam Generating Unites, a combined-cycle configuration, “that represents the most thermally efficient and cleanest available approach to gas-fired generation at commercial scale,” the letter stated.
The Senate Committee letter also addressed the reduction of greenhouse gasses by 88.4% by 2032. Fundamental Data responded that the permit was issued under the West Virginia air pollution control law and referenced compliance with 40 CFR Part 60 Subpart KKKK, the applicable federal performance standard for stationary combustion turbines. It also acknowledged that the regulatory landscape of greenhouse emissions is constantly changing and that the project remains committed to compliance with any and all requirements as they become established by authorities.
“Our long-term development plan already incorporates carbon capture technology as part of this project’s future phases, not because we are required to include it, but because we believe it reflects responsible development at this scale,” the letter states.
Data Centers are discussed in the letter extensively. The letter discusses the need for more energy generation due to the increase in need, “driven by cloud technologies, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and the early stages of an industrial resurgence” and called the current grid “structurally underprepared for what is already arriving.”
Statistics such as digital infrastructure that supports data center supporting personal devices and enterprise commuting that accounts for 6% of the nation’s power consumption, an acceleration in deployment of AI in sectors such as national defense, financial services and healthcare projected to “push that figure to 12% of total national capacity by 2030” are discussed as some of the core reasons for the project’s inception.
“The customers building and operating those systems are not waiting for the grid to be ready. They need power that is always on, always available, and sufficient in scale to support operations that the public depends on and that this country’s global standing requires. Ridgeline is designed to meet that need,” the letter states.
The letter argues that it is a matter of national standing and every other competing nation is perusing AI as a means to commercial dominance, military superiority and economic dominance in the world. Without energy infrastructure to support it, the United States will suffer consequences, “measured in jobs, in competitiveness, and in the standard of living of working Americans,the people who will bear the cost of energy scarcity and technological decline most directly” the letter asserts.
The letter states that Tucker County and specifically the site near the landfill between Davis and Thomas as scouted specifically and purposefully because this was never conceived to be “a modest project.” It was sited for its location next to the existing natural gas pipeline through the area and water resources, among other factors.
“Ridgeline is not a modest project, and it was never conceived as one. The strategic location provides proximity to the nation’s largest natural gas field, adjacency to one of the most critical transmission nodes on the eastern interconnection, abundant water resources, and a secured land position of significant scale in a jurisdiction that does not impose the local zoning, permitting, and regulatory layers that add cost and time to projects of this type elsewhere in the country. The site was chosen with a long view in mind. At more than 3,200 feet of elevation, it also provides a natural thermal advantage that meaningfully reduces cooling demands year-round, an operating benefit that no comparable site within this proximity to the mid-Atlantic corridor can replicate. The infrastructure we are establishing, the regulatory framework we are operating within, and the technology platform we are deploying are all designed to accommodate the scale of need that this industry and this country will require. We intend to grow with that need, through the proper regulatory channels and in compliance with all applicable law, as we have done to reach this point.”
Among claims set forth in the letter is that the facility will contain renewable energy generation. The letter claims that the facility will include nearly 1.3 gigawatts of solar generation, a claim the letter states is “among the largest solar projects in the United States.”
“Our design uses solar capacity to actively reduce gas turbine output in real time: as solar production increases, gas consumption decreases. We are integrating renewables into this project by design, not as an afterthought,” the letter states.
The letter also went on the dispute the Senate Committee letter’s suggestions that renewable energy paired with battery storage could “serve as a straightforward alternative to the gas generation component of the project.” The letter disputes that the project is simply of such momentous scale that solar generation and storage to supply it would be impossible.
“The math does not support that conclusion at our scale. A single 1 gigawatt continuous load requires approximately 4 gigawatts of installed solar capacity to account for a 25% average capacity factor, and roughly 25,000 acres of land. Scaling that approach to meet only the 40 gigawatts of projected new AI demand nationally by 2030 would require approximately one million acres. To put that in perspective, on million acres exceeds the entire land area of Rhode Island. Global solar cell manufacturing capacity is currently only 6 gigawatts annually. Even if the United States absorbed the entire world’s supply, it would only meet roughly 15% of the projected energy need.”
The letter goes on the address the Senate letter’s suggestion of nuclear energy as a potential baseload solution. The letter states that while it is a technology that is being actively considered for future development in the project, “current U.S. development pipeline reveals that there is virtually no new nuclear capacity capable of producing energy by 2030.” Only a handful of projects are on track to deliver power before 2033, a timeline, the letter states, that shows the reality of nuclear energy and how projects are built.
In the case of nuclear energy, the letter asserts, environmental impact statements and other regulatory requirements can take two to four year before a formal technical review begins. The review process will add an additional 18 months to the process, the letter states, before a permit can be issued. Site preparation, module fabrication and commissioning can take several years, as well. In total, the letter asserts, best case scenario, it can be seven years from decision to when the lights first come on. A timeline, the letter said is not fast enough to meet the demands this country is facing in the next four years.
“That is not fast enough to meet the energy demands this country is facing between now and 2030. Nuclear has an important role to play in the future of American energy, but it is not a short-term solution to our pressing needs,” the letter states.
The letter also states that the facility is designed to change fuels and adapt in the future. It is designed to be fully hydrogen compatible with future development focused on incorporating advanced gasification technology and nuclear energy, supported by carbon capture, the letter states.
“We are not building a static asset. We are building a platform, one whose energy profile is intended to advance as the technology and the economics to support it mature,” the letter states.
The letter ended by stating that the project was permitted legally and through the proper channels, as well as reviewed by the appropriate regulatory authorities. A reiteration was made that the project meets the urgent and genuine needs of the nation’s energy consumption and the needs
The letter was cc’d to The Honorable Shelley Moore Capito, Chairman, Committee on Environment and Public Works, United States Senate and The Honorable Mike Lee, Chairman, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate.
