Perennial Power Holdings Inc.’s efforts to build a 415-megawatt natural gas power plant near Hermiston have come to an end.

The Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council on Tuesday, Sept. 27, terminated the company’s site certificate, a move Perennial Power sought for the Perennial Wind Chaser Station.

The company received a site certificate from the Energy Facility Siting Council in 2015 to build the plant outside Hermiston. Perennial Power from September 2020 to March 2021 built an access road and bridge, according to the company’s July 18 notice to terminate the site certificate, but it never started on the second phase of the project — construction of the plant and its infrastructure.

After the company broke ground on a road on the site in 2020, Friends of the Columbia Gorge and Columbia Riverkeeper filed a joint lawsuit against the project, claiming, among other things, the company had not properly met requirements to keep its site certificate because it did not have a required stormwater permit when it started work. The two pro-environmental groups lauded the siting council’s decision.

“Over the last six years, public opposition has prevailed in stopping several proposed fossil fuel plants that would have harmed air quality in the Columbia River Gorge and exacerbated climate change,” according to Nathan Baker, senior staff attorney for Friends of the Columbia Gorge. “Perennial was the last of these plants to be stopped.”

According to Columbia Riverkeeper and Friends of the Columbia Gorge, Perennial Wind Chaser would have been one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in Oregon, pushing out least 30 million tons of greenhouse gasses during its 30-year lifecycle.

J.J. Jamieson, Perennial Power Holdings’ vice president of operations and development, did not return a request for comment.