Magazine names FirstEnergy top utility for economic development
For the 10th time in the past 12 years, Site Selection magazine has named FirstEnergy Corp. one of the top utilities in the country for promoting economic development.
In 2012, the company helped attract more than $2.7 billion in third-party capital investment to its Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia and Maryland service areas that is expected to create more than 7,900 new jobs. The magazine chooses utilities based on a mix of objective and subjective criteria, including what the utility does to help create jobs and facilitate investment, website tools and data that can be used to help business development, and survey input from corporate end users and site consultants.
FirstEnergy’s largest job-creating developments in Pennsylvania were Dollar General, which invested $100 million and created 500 jobs; PetSmart, which invested $50 million and created 500 jobs and Aquion Energy, which invested $7 million and created 360 jobs.