Hopkins hopes to expand East Baltimore power plant. Neighbors want a word.

The Johns Hopkins Hospital wants to expand a power plant on its campus in East Baltimore, a proposal that is drawing backlash from neighbors concerned about the health risks of burning more natural gas.

Most Baltimoreans don’t know these generators exist. But behind an unassuming brick wall in East Baltimore, Hopkins runs its own power plant. The medical campus operates a pair of natural gas turbines near the hospital and could soon get a third.

The new turbine would be added to Hopkins’ South Energy Plant, near East Baltimore neighborhoods such as Dunbar-Broadway and Butchers Hill. The plant houses one of the existing units and sits across the street from a public housing complex and within blocks of an elementary school.

As the regional power grid comes under increased stress from data centers, operators have warned that the mid-Atlantic region could see an increased risk of rolling brownouts and blackouts as soon as next summer. That has made polluting fuel sources like natural gas more appealing and, in some cases, put big energy users at odds with communities like those in East Baltimore.

At a meeting on the expansion last week hosted by the Maryland Department of the Environment, Thomas Lentz, the Johns Hopkins Health System’s vice president of facilities management, pitched the expansion as necessary to relieve the hospital’s reliance on the regional energy system and to protect its patients during times of extreme stress on the grid. He called the turbine the best technology available for the job.

Still, burning more natural gas means more air pollution. MDE regulators will review how the expansion would contribute to carbon dioxide emissions, which drive climate change, and releases of nitrogen oxides, pollutants that can aggravate respiratory issues and — over longer periods of exposure — cause asthma.

According to Hopkins’ permit application, the existing turbines at the plant release around 70 tons of nitrogen oxides per year, and a third unit could add as much as 40 tons. Still, the facility would have to keep total emissions below a plantwide annual limit of 104.9 tons.

The new unit would produce up to eight megawatts of power and generate steam for heating the multiblock medical campus.

Lentz said the new turbine, a Solar Taurus 70, comes with features that mitigate releases of pollutants like nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide. But to some in the neighborhood, Hopkins’ insistence on gas is frustrating.

Twenty years ago, natural gas might have been acceptable, said Stephanie Khanna, vice president of the Butchers Hill Association, but today there are cleaner alternatives.

Lentz told community members that Hopkins explored renewable options but found that solar panels wouldn’t produce enough energy and the campus lacks the space for battery storage.

Shannon Heafey, a public participation coordinator for MDE, said state regulators will review the Hopkins application to see if it meets federal clean air laws and could release a draft permit for public comment after the holidays.

Hopkins hopes to begin installation of new equipment early next year to bring the new turbine online in mid-2028, according to a timeline shared at the meeting. Construction would also require zoning approvals from the city.

Although turbines at the power plant primarily run on natural gas, Hopkins sometimes resorts to dirtier fuel oil in emergencies — an approach Lentz said the hospital took for multiple days during the winter freeze earlier this year.

The plant has made headlines before: Last year, it was the site of a spill that released 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel into the harbor.

Some see an irony in plans to expand the plant even as the Hopkins hospital treats respiratory issues caused by Baltimore’s high prevalence of childhood asthma. The plant is barely two blocks from Commodore John Rodgers Elementary/Middle School, which is set to reopen in January. The surrounding community ranks in the 97th percentile of Maryland communities vulnerable to pollution, according to MDE screening.

Corey Brown, a parent and resident near the power plant, believes the power plant expansion will be a money saver for Hopkins — a rationale he said shouldn’t justify putting neighbors at risk.

“You cannot pollute and then drive revenue from something that you just caused on your own,” said Brown, an energy procurement strategist who spent about a decade working for Constellation Energy.

Pressed at last week’s meeting on the financial implications of the project, Lentz called the expansion an “investment” that would cut the hospital’s energy bill.

The power plant expansion isn’t the only project in the broader Johns Hopkins system to draw neighborhood scrutiny in recent years.

At its undergraduate campus in North Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins University is building a sprawling artificial intelligence institute, to the vexation of many in Remington who tried to block the project from cutting down trees.

And at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center campus at the city’s eastern end, the university is planning a 25,000-square-foot data center. The additional natural gas turbine would not deliver power to that project, Lentz said.

Also attending the meeting was Principal Marc Martin from Commodore John Rodgers, the school slated to reopen two blocks from the power plant.

Martin said many of the 800 families preparing to send their children to the new building weren’t aware of the proposed turbine, and he questioned the steps the hospital and MDE took to spread the word among low-income residents.

The principal had one request: Could Hopkins commit to holding a meeting on its plan for the elementary school’s families?

Lentz’s reply was short. “It’s not in the plan,” he said.