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Summit Submits Application for CCPI Grant To Build 90% Carbon Capture Power Plant in Texas
Summit Power Group, Inc. - September 9, 2009

 

NEWS RELEASE

 

 

 

Summit Power Submits Application for Clean Coal Power Initiative Grant

To Build 90 percent Carbon Capture Power Plant in Texas

Capture Rate is Highest Being Proposed World-Wide

ODESSA, TX, Sept. 25, 2009 – The Summit Power Group (www.summitpower.com) has applied for federal stimulus funding to build the world’s cleanest coal-fueled power plant at the Texas FutureGen finalist site of Penwell, 15 miles west of Odessa.

 

The Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP) will be a first-of-its-kind integrated combined cycle (IGCC) 400 MW power plant sited in West Texas’s Permian Basin, a hub of energy resource development and carbon sequestration activity. Using commercially established and warranted Siemens technology, and with project performance guaranteed, TCEP will integrate for the first time proven gasification and carbon capture technologies to achieve a carbon capture rate of 90 percent – the highest proposed anywhere in the world. 

 

Currently, there are no commercial power plants that capture carbon dioxide (CO2) on a large scale. TCEP will capture 3 million tons of carbon dioxide annually for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations in the Permian Basin and ultimate geologic sequestration, so that the captured CO2 will not reach the atmosphere.

 

The project is intended as a model for carbon capture projects elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad. Siemens is the primary equipment provider for TCEP’s gasifiers, power island and controls.  Most significantly, Siemens is warranting the performance and reliability of their equipment, including a “twin pack” of SFG-500 gasifiers and a state-of-the-art SGT6-5000F combustion turbine. Fluor is the project’s design engineer. 

 

“This Project is now one of Siemens’s highest priority IGCC/CCS projects currently under development in the United States. It is a project of national and potential global importance,” said Harry T. Morehead, Siemens Manager, IGCC and Gasification Sales and Marketing, Americas. “Siemens believes that the combination of Summit Power’s exceptional track record of developing power projects, Fluor’s leading project engineering and execution capabilities, coupled with Siemens’ advanced technologies, will deliver a true showcase project for the United States and the world.”  

 

Summit applied to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a grant under the Clean Coal Power Initiative, Round 3. The grant request represents approximately 20 percent of the total cost of the $1.75 billion project, including finance costs. TCEP will be a privately owned, conventionally project-financed facility that produces a number of highly marketable commodities including: electricity, CO2, sulfuric acid, non-leachable slag, and other derivatives of TCEP-produced synthesis gas (syngas) – including ammonia, urea, methanol and/or synthetic natural gas.

 

Summit Power is a 20-year-old company that has successfully developed thousands of megawatts and billions of dollars worth of U.S. power projects, primarily natural gas-fired and wind-powered. Summit has just launched a utility-scale PV solar project development company as a joint venture with REC Solar of Norway. Summit’s prospective IGCC/CCS projects include TCEP, the REC Project in Montana, and surface facilities for underground coal gasification (UCG) projects in the early stages of development by Laurus Energy as a licensee of Ergo Exergy. Summit is not a developer of conventional coal-fired power plants without carbon capture.

 

“Summit has worked aggressively for the past four years to find a way to use our country’s vast coal stores in the cleanest manner possible,” said Donald Hodel, Chairman of Summit and former U.S. Secretary of Energy. “TCEP represents a breakthrough in America’s ability to finally establish energy independence and energy security using its own fuel reserves while setting an important new benchmark for protecting our earth and water resources. We believe we are building something that will fundamentally change how the world keeps the lights on.”

 

Summit chose Texas for its project due to the strong commitment of local elected officials, who believe that the state’s unique and longstanding experience in carbon sequestration – thanks to federally supported work by the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) and 30 years of experience importing natural CO2 into the Permian Basin from surrounding states for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) – positions it as the natural leader for capture and sequestration in a carbon-constrained world. Because of the opportunity to earn revenue from CO2 for EOR, Texas is a particularly attractive site for these types of projects.

 

Texas competed for the federal government’s near-zero-emissions FutureGen project until Dec. 2007, when the FutureGen Alliance chose a site in Mattoon, Illinois, over another in Illinois and two sites in Texas. Officials in Midland-Odessa immediately asked Summit to consider building its privately owned, near-zero-emissions plant at Penwell.   

 

Due to the diligent work last legislative session by prominent Texas elected officials – including Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, House Speaker Joe Straus, State Sen. Kel Seliger (R-Amarillo), State Reps. Phil King (R-Weatherford), Rafael Anchia (D-Dallas), Tryon Lewis (R-Odessa) and Mark Strama (D-Austin) – a new Texas law, HB 469, was passed and signed by the governor on June 22, 2009.

 

HB 469 offers significant financial incentives to the first three clean-coal power plants built in Texas that capture at least 70 percent of their carbon dioxide and privately retain the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) to do the measuring, monitoring and verification (MMV) of the sequestered CO2 to meet the state’s current standard of 99 percent retention in the ground for a minimum of 1,000 years. This is the highest legislative bar set for carbon capture and sequestration in the United States to date.

 

At 70 percent carbon capture, a coal gasification project will have lower CO2 emissions for all power produced than a typical and efficient natural gas-fired power plant, currently the lowest-emitting form of generation using fossil fuels.  At 90 percent capture, TCEP will be even cleaner.

For more information on TCEP or Summit Power Group, please contact Laura Miller, Summit Power’s Director of Projects, Texas, at 214-763-0600, or email lmiller@summitpower.com.

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