Blackstone Energy Transition Partners is acquiring a 620MW natural gas power plant in the US from Ardian for nearly $1bn (€850m).
Blackstone said it has agreed to acquire Hill Top Energy Center, the natural gas power plant in Western Pennsylvania, as part of its larger plan to invest over $25bn in the state’s natural gas power generation and data centre assets.
Completed in 2021, the Hill Top facility is located in Greene County, Pennsylvania, and supplies energy for data-centre development and other use cases in the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland (PJM) electric market.
Ardian, through its Ardian Americas Infrastructure Funds series, acquired a 41.9% stake in Hill Top in July 2019 and purchased the remaining stake in the combined cycle gas turbine facility in April 2025.
Bilal Khan, senior MD, and Mark Zhu, MD, Blackstone Energy Transition Partners, said: “The electricity infrastructure required to power the AI revolution requires a tremendous amount of capital. We are proud to make our latest investment in this sector – which is among our highest conviction investment themes – in Western Pennsylvania.
“Hill Top is among the best-in-class and a highly efficient modern power generation facility that is exceptionally well positioned to help Pennsylvania and the region serve as a key center of AI innovation.”
US Senator Dave McCormick said: “In addition to the historic $25bn investment they announced at our Energy and Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh this summer, I am thrilled to see Blackstone deepening its commitment to Pennsylvania’s energy infrastructure.”
Mathias Burghardt, EVP, head and founder of infrastructure, Ardian, said: “Investing at the start of construction, we had the conviction that a new state-of-the-art power plant in PJM with access to cheap, abundant, clean-burning natural gas was a winner.
“For more than 20 years, Ardian has invested in clean, efficient power generation in growing markets, and we plan to continue to do so long into the future.”
Keving Rohde, director at Ardian, said: “Rapid growth in AI workloads and hyperscale data centers are fueling extraordinary power demand and driving our mission to lead the energy transition and meet demand for reliable baseload generation.
“Ardian’s follow-on investment in Hill Top earlier this year demonstrated the firm strategic vision and anticipation of market trends. Our control position allowed us to opportunistically right-size the project’s capital structure to provide liquidity to our investors.”
Mark Voccola, senior MD and co-head of Ardian’s US infrastructure business, said: “Hill Top is a prime example of how Ardian continually adds value throughout an assets lifecycle – from funding and actively managing construction to an on-time, on-budget result and working with management to smoothly manage operations to best-in-class availability levels.
“We look forward to witnessing the continued success of the Project and are confident that Blackstone will be great stewards of this asset into the future.”
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