The company was given one of the largest subsidy packages in New York history, but ran into stiff financial and permitting headwinds in the years that followed. Now, Plug Power has officially called off plans for the massive production facility at STAMP.
Gov. Kathy Hochul tosses a shovelful of dirt at the Plug Power groundbreaking in October 2021. Photo via the Governor’s Office.
In a note in its annual report to shareholders, filed March 2, Plug Power made it official: The company’s green hydrogen plant at the STAMP industrial park in Genesee County — once envisioned as the largest in the country — was officially dead.
The note, just a single paragraph, said simply that Plug Power had inked an agreement to sell off the land it bought from the Genesee County Economic Development Center, plus the electric substation infrastructure it had paid for.
The buyer is Stream Data Centers, which is planning a massive, $19 billion data center at the site.
With that, the project that previously earned local tax breaks and a low-cost hydropower allocation equal to $4 million per job — among the largest-ever subsidy packages in New York — was over.
What remains at the remote industrial park in the Town of Alabama are two hulking globes — Plug Power’s electrolyzers. Under the company’s initial plans, it would have combined millions of gallons of Lake Ontario water with hundreds of megawatts of cheap power from the New York Power Authority to create 45 metric tons of liquid hydrogen daily. That would have doubled the company’s total hydrogen output.
The fuel was envisioned as a replacement for diesel, a way to “decarboniz[e] freight-transportation” as New York shifts away from fuels that emit greenhouse gases. With a $290 million investment planned, the plant’s groundbreaking in 2021 attracted fanfare from Gov. Kathy Hochul, Sen. Chuck Schumer and other area politicians. And as the first tenant of STAMP, the project was seen as a proof-of-concept for the fledgling industrial park. Plug Power planned to hire for 68 jobs.
But Plug Power’s project never came to fruition. Shortly after the groundbreaking, both the company and STAMP ran into stiff headwinds. Those included Plug Power’s rocky finances, which in 2024 led to a pause in construction; delays in obtaining permits for critical industrial park infrastructure; and Donald Trump’s election in 2025, which imperiled a lifesaving $1.66 billion federal loan the company won under the Biden administration.
The company’s stock traded for under $1 per share for several weeks last spring, hitting a low of $0.69 per share in May.
Now, according to the SEC filing, the company hopes to earn at least $132 million by selling its land and power infrastructure to Stream Data Centers, the builder of a massive server farm planned for the industrial park. It’s not clear how the company arrived at that valuation. Its land at the industrial park — two parcels totaling about 29 acres — is valued at $2 million, according to county property records. Plug Power contributed $55 million to construction of the electric substation, records from the industrial development agency show.
Michael Barnard, a consultant and analyst who’s written extensively about the clean energy and hydrogen industries, described Plug Power as “deep into the desperation phase.” STAMP, he said, is just “collateral damage.”
“It was a mutual choice to have a high-tech, high-hype organization in there,” he said. “If they’d asked my opinion, I’d say, ‘Pick one that’s got legs, this is what’s going to happen.’ And it happened.”
Environmental advocates and representatives of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, whose territory neighbors the STAMP industrial park, said they aren’t sad to see Plug Power go. Alex Page, an attorney representing the Nation, said members worried both about the daily truck traffic carting away the liquid hydrogen produced by the company and about potential hydrogen-related disasters.
“Plug’s facility at STAMP never made sense — not for the environment, not for local residents, and certainly not for the Nation, who stood to lose the most from having a hydrogen production facility next door,” Page said in a statement.
Earl Wells III, a spokesperson for the Genesee County Economic Development Center, said in a statement that Plug Power, over its five-year relationship with the IDA, paid nearly $5 million in fees to local entities “while only claiming $935,000 in sales tax exemptions on their project.” That resulted in more than $4 million in payments to the Town of Alabama, Genesee County and the local school district, he said.
“While Plug Power did not complete construction, they initiated critical infrastructure for future investment and careers while also funding local services,” Wells III said.
A Plug Power spokesperson declined an interview request for this story and did not respond to a list of written questions.
Massive subsidies, forgiven payments
The first time Plug Power made headlines in Western New York was when the Genesee County Economic Development Center, the local industrial development agency, released details of the generous subsidy package it had offered the company.
Investigative Post in March 2021 termed it “the mother of all subsidy deals.” The benefits included:
- Discounted market-rate electricity valued at $140 million.
- A 20-year property tax break valued at $118 million.
- Discounted hydropower valued at $7.9 million.
- A state tax credit worth $2 million.
- A New York Power Authority grant worth $1.5 million.
- And sales tax breaks valued at $1.1 million.
The total price tag: $269.5 million. The cost per job: $4 million. Analysts at the time said it was one of the largest subsidy packages they’d seen.
By that point, the Genesee County Economic Development Center had been building STAMP for more than a decade. It had spent millions — including funds from the Buffalo Billion — to acquire land, obtain zoning approvals and complete some permitting steps. But the industrial park had no tenants.
Plug Power, headquartered near Albany, had been a publicly traded company since the late 1990s and was riding the latest wave of market enthusiasm for hydrogen fuel, according to Barnard, the industry consultant.
Around 2021, Barnard said, “Their stock shot up again, and they got hundreds of millions of dollars, and they started expanding again. To Europe, to China, to India … and going to, you know, Alabama, New York.”
Although the Tonawanda Seneca Nation sued the IDA over its approval of Plug Power’s project, the case settled in October and the project began weeks later.
As part of its project, Plug Power pledged to fund construction of a 450-megawatt substation — since upgraded to a 600-megawatt substation — at a cost of $55 million. Under the original terms of the deal, the company would get first dibs on the power it needed and then sell the rights to draw power from the substation to other STAMP tenants. The New York Power Authority in 2021 awarded the company 60 megawatts of low-cost hydropower and in 2023 approved it for 205 megawatts of discounted high-load power.
“In theory, we will pay for what we use and get reimbursed for what we don’t use,” company representative Brenor Brophy said in 2021.
Construction of the plant continued through 2022. But the IDA had a problem: It couldn’t obtain the permits it needed for critical STAMP infrastructure, including a wastewater pipeline.
Troves of emails and other records later obtained by Investigative Post showed staff for both Hochul and Schumer intervened with the permitting agencies as part of a concerted lobbying effort. At the time, politicians were clear: No permits meant Plug Power could leave town.
“The potential exists that if the [Department of Environmental Conservation] permitting process fails to meet timelines, Plug Power’s project could be severely delayed with major repercussions,” three Western New York lawmakers — state Sen. Ed Rath III, state Sen. George Borrello and Assembly Member Steve Hawley — wrote to Hochul in June 2022.
Both state and federal agencies ultimately approved the permits and construction of the wastewater pipeline began. Then, in 2023, came three successive blows: First, in June, the Fish and Wildlife Service hit pause on the pipeline permit, halting construction. Then, in the fall, construction crews digging a trench for the pipeline spilled hundreds of gallons of drilling fluid in protected wetlands. And finally, Plug Power posted a “going concern” to investors, a warning that the company was running low on cash.
A 2023 drilling spill in the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge.
By the end of the year, it turned to the federal government for a bailout, in the form of the $1.66 billion Department of Energy loan, which it won in 2024.
The money would have funded construction at STAMP, which had stalled, and another facility in Texas. While Plug Power waited for the money to flow, Trump won the presidential election, and the company opted to pause use of the money.
The IDA is now unwinding its agreements with Plug Power and forgiving some $1.8 million in fees the company owes. Under the terms of its subsidy package, Plug Power owed the IDA $900,000 per year instead of millions in property taxes. The payments began in 2023 and were set to run through 2042. That money was then distributed to the Oakfield-Alabama Central School District, the Town of Alabama and Genesee County.
Plug Power made just two of those payments, failing to pay in 2025 and 2026.
On March 5, the Genesee Gateway Local Development Corporation, an arm of the Economic Development Center, voted to terminate its agreement with Plug Power and to forgive its “outstanding balances,” according to meeting minutes.
Hydrogen out, data center in
According to Barnard, Plug Power was always going to be an unreliable tenant for STAMP.
The hydrogen sector, he said, operates in a boom-bust cycle and the fuel companies like Plug Power produce struggles to compete in price with diesel. The industry gained a foothold in the early 2000s, he explained, when cheaper forms of clean energy, like wind and solar, were still developing.
“Hydrogen can be green, but it can’t be cheap,” he said. “It’s expensive to make, it’s expensive to store, it’s expensive to distribute, and it’s expensive to use.”
Environmentalists criticized companies like Plug Power for transforming a clean form of energy — hydropower in Western New York’s case — into a more volatile form. Page, the Nation’s attorney, said members had existential fears of a hydrogen-related disaster occurring at STAMP.
Subscribe to our free weekly newsletters
Bob Ciesielski, vice chair of the local chapter of the Sierra Club, described the company as “Basically … throwing energy away.”
Hydrogen as a fuel, he said, “makes no sense other than it being a niche [product] good for smaller projects where you cannot easily electrify.”
The IDA has since turned to Stream Data Centers to recoup costs for the substation and fill space at the industrial park. Leadership is currently entertaining a bid for a 2.2-million-square-foot facility that would cost more than $19 billion.
Sarah Howard, a consultant for the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, said that project ought to be rejected, too.
“At the end of the day, big tech and private equity don’t care about the residents of Genesee County, they just want to profit at the expense of our quality of life and well-being.”
posted 5 days ago – March 11, 2026
