YOUNGSTOWN — City council is prepared Wednesday to approve a second one-year moratorium on the process SOBE Energy Solutions LLC plans to use at its downtown Youngstown location to convert rubber tire chips into synthetic gas to create steam energy.

Sponsored by Councilwoman Anita Davis, D-6th Ward, the ordinance would impose a second one-year moratorium on pyrolysis — the gasification or combustion of tires, chipped tires, plastics and electronic waste — in Youngstown. The first moratorium was approved Dec. 20, 2023 by city council.

Like the initial moratorium, the new one states city council “desires to investigate the impacts that pyrolysis and gasification would have on the community’s safety and well-being before any facility that converts, or attempts to convert, plastics, tire derived chips, chipped tires and / or electronic waste into fuel or feedstock through certain chemical conversion processes, including pyrolysis or gasification, starts construction and begins operating.”

Davis said: “I’ve been doing a lot of research, and I have not seen anything positive or anything that says it’s a good idea to do this in the city. We should maintain the moratorium for another year and then let them fight it out in court. We have a standard that’s set in law. We’ll enforce it on our part.”

David Ferro, SOBE’s CEO, declined Monday to comment. He said last year that the plant would be “very clean with zero hazardous waste and zero hazardous emissions” and that it would only use shredded tires.

Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th Ward, said he’s looked at SOBE’s proposal and “from an environmental justice standpoint, you couldn’t pick a worse place. It’s a more intense process of creating fuel that should not be in our business district.”

Ray said he’s never going to approve SOBE’s proposal.

“You couldn’t pick a worse location for this,” he said. “It’s a terrible location considering its proximity to a hospital, university and public housing. This is not just switching fuel sources, it’s making the fuel onsite and that’s a whole different ball game.”

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency issued an “air permit to install and operate” to SOBE in February.

The EPA stated it would allow SOBE to install a “thermolyzer unit to process tire chips. The unit will produce a synthetic gas that would serve as a supplemental fuel in two existing natural gas-fired boilers that are already installed, operating and permitted. The permit does meet the applicable Ohio environmental rules and regulations so Ohio EPA is obligated to issue a permit.”

SOBE issued a statement after Youngstown’s initial moratorium saying it respected the city’s decision.

SOBE has more than 40 heating and cooling customers in the downtown area as well as Youngstown State University.

Based in Dublin, Ohio, SOBE acquired the former Youngstown Thermal LLC and Youngstown Thermal Cooling LLC in November 2021 for $250,000. The company had managed the facility for about two years prior.

Before taking over, Youngstown Thermal had numerous problems for years operating its cooling system — leaving the handful of downtown businesses that used it without air conditioning during the summer.

Youngstown Thermal was placed into receivership in 2017 after the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio was informed by the company’s former CEO that the business had financial struggles that could have caused an energy crisis downtown. Youngstown Thermal couldn’t ensure adequate service to its customers and was in danger of insolvency when the PUCO stepped in.

Youngstown Thermal is the oldest district heating and cooling system in the country, having begun operations in 1895. It was designed to generate and distribute steam to heat downtown businesses using coal as its main source of fuel.