Clean-coal power plant to break ground in Texas
In a recent Op-Ed in the New York Times, author Joe Nocera talks about “A Real Carbon Solution” in Odessa, Tex. as the Summit Power Group plans to break ground on a $2.5 billion coal gasification power plant. Summit has named it the Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP).
TCEP is a “NowGen” Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) facility that will incorporate carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in a first-of-its-kind commercial clean coal power plant.
TCEP will be a 400MW power/poly-gen plant that will also produce urea for the U.S. fertilizer market and capture 90 percent of its carbon dioxide (CO2) – approximately 3 million tons per year – which will be used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the West Texas Permian Basin.
According to Nocera, “Part of the promise of this power plant is its use of gasified coal; because the gasification process doesn’t burn the coal, it makes for far cleaner energy than a traditional coal-fired plant.”
“But another reason this plant — and a handful of similar plants — has such enormous potential is that it will capture some 90 percent of the facility’s already reduced carbon emissions. Some of those carbon emissions will be used to make fertilizer. The rest will be sold to the oil industry,which will push it into the ground, as part of a process called enhanced oil recovery.”
TCEP received a $450MM award in 2010 from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative. TCEP received its final air quality permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on December 28, 2010.
The Texas Clean Energy project will be the first United States based power plant that combines both Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle and carbon capture and storage technologies.
