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West Texas power projects could hold the key to carbon emissions
Fort Worth Star-Telegram - June 27, 2009

Posted on Sat, Jun. 27, 2009
West Texas power projects could hold the key to carbon emissions


By JACK Z. SMITH
jzsmith@star-telegram.com
"In reality, there is no such thing as clean coal," environmental organizations declared in an advertisement designed to counter a campaign by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a group led by the coal industry.
But companies planning two potentially trailblazing coal-fired power plants in West Texas say their ventures could make the Lone Star State a leading international player in the development of workable clean-coal technology, thanks in part to financial incentives adopted by the Legislature this year and in 2007.
The projects could help meet future electricity demand in fast-growing Dallas-Fort Worth, while also enhancing oil recovery in West Texas’ Permian Basin, backers say.
Both proposed projects are expensive, relying on technologies that haven’t yet been proved on a large scale. But a prominent Texas environmentalist critical of coal plants acknowledges that one of the projects, if successful, would be "the game-changer" enabling coal plants worldwide to capture large volumes of carbon dioxide emissions that many scientists say contribute to global warming.
The two projects
Tenaska, a $16 billion privately held company based in Omaha, Neb., that develops and owns power plants, proposes building a coal-fired plant just east of Sweetwater, a town of 12,000 that already is at the epicenter of U.S. wind power. The proposed 765-megawatt coal plant, producing enough electricity to power 600,000 homes, would cost an estimated $2.5 billion and capture 85 to 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, Tenaska officials say.
The project has strong Metroplex ties. Tenaska’s Arlington-based Business Development Group is overseeing the ambitious undertaking, called the Tenaska Trailblazer Energy Center. And Irving-based Fluor Corp., known globally for expertise in designing and building power plants, would be the prime contractor.
Construction could begin as early as 2010, with operation in 2015.
It would be a traditional pulverized-coal plant, but "the thing that’s unique about the Trailblazer project is that it’s proposed to be one of the first, if not the first, full-scale applications of carbon-dioxide capture to a power plant," said Dave Fiorelli, president and CEO of Tenaska’s Business Development Group. Thus far, "it’s only been done in the laboratory and on small-scale demonstration projects," he said.
Summit Power Group, a company based in Bainbridge Island, Wash., whose chairman is former Energy Secretary Donald Hodel, is proposing a $1.6 billion plant near Penwell, 15 miles southwest of Odessa. The 345-megawatt plant would convert coal into a synthetic gas that would be burned to power turbines to generate electricity.
The proposed integrated gasification combined technology method has been used on smaller projects but none as large as the proposed Penwell plant, said Laura Miller, the former Dallas mayor who is director of Texas projects for Summit. The Penwell plant would capture an estimated 80 to 85 percent of CO{-2} emissions, she said. The German industrial giant Siemens would operate the Penwell plant and provide the gasification system. After developing the plant, Summit would sell it to someone else, as it has customarily done on other power projects, Miller said.
Summit could break ground for the plant in 2010 and have it operating by late 2013 or early 2014, Miller said.
Both proposed West Texas plants would:
Use coal transported by rail from Wyoming.
Generate electricity into the ERCOT power grid serving most of the state, including North Texas.
Sell their captured CO{-2} for enhancing oil recovery in Permian Basin fields. Tenaska estimates its captured CO{-2} would boost crude oil output more than 10 million barrels annually and mean hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue for producers. The CO{-2} used in oil recovery would remain sequestered underground.
Both plants face potential regulatory and financial hurdles and aren’t certain to be built. Both projects are seeking federal and state financial incentives, including substantial tax breaks available to clean-coal projects.
Both plants would be significant economic contributors. Tenaska estimates that its project would generate 1,500 to 2,000 jobs at peak construction and more than 100 permanent jobs, and Summit estimates 1,200 construction jobs and 120 permanent jobs for its plant.
Tenaska plans to make a final decision on building the Sweetwater plant after engineering studies that produce a preliminary design and specific cost estimate. Summit considers a federal loan guarantee crucial to building its Penwell plant, because the global economic crisis has made financing difficult, Miller said.
The two projects will be watched closely because of their potential to be among the first, if not the first, large commercial projects of their type to capture the bulk of plant emissions of carbon dioxide.
Tom "Smitty" Smith, the Texas director for Public Citizen, an environmental watchdog, said: "We don’t support the use of coal for electrical generation, period. There are significant problems with the mining of coal . . . then you have significant problems with coal waste disposal, like coal ash in Tennessee or contamination of watersheds."
Public Citizen favors expansion of renewable energy such as wind and solar power, as well as increased energy efficiency and conservation that reduce the need for new power plants.
Coal accounts for about half of U.S. electricity generation and is the nation’s most abundant fossil fuel. Fiorelli said coal plants also have greatly reduced emissions of regulated pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, mercury and particulates.
While Public Citizen doesn’t support coal plants, Smith said, "if you’re going to do it . . . doing coal gasification like the Summit plant" is preferable. Public Citizen opposes the Tenaska plant in part "because of the enormous amount of water it would use" in arid West Texas, Smith said, while also expressing concern about waste polluting creeks.
Fiorelli countered that the Tenaska plant would probably employ an unconventional dry cooling method using 1.8 million gallons of water per day, compared with 10 million to 12 million gallons daily for the traditional wet cooling method. He also said the plant would have a landfill to handle waste such as coal ash and as much as feasible would be recycled for other uses, such as roadbed material.
Fiorelli said company officials considered both pulverized-coal and gasification technology for the Sweetwater plant but decided to employ the former for various technical reasons, including the fact that Wyoming Powder River Basin coal is not well-suited for some gasification systems. Tenaska plans to build a gasification plant in Illinois because it makes more sense there, he said.
Smith acknowledges that the Tenaska plant, if successful, could have a global impact. If the carbon-capture technology works, "that would be the game-changer and would enable people to put this technology on [coal] plants all over the nation and the world," he said, adding that it "would make a huge difference in terms of capturing carbon."
Another Texas project drawing attention is a proposed $2.8 billion venture by Houston-based Hunton Energy that would use petroleum coke — a form of carbon derived from oil refining— and coal and biomass such as wood chips to produce synthetic gas and steam that would help power a large Dow Chemical facility at Freeport on the Gulf Coast. Hunton said the gasification system would capture almost all CO{-2} emissions, which could be used in enhanced oil recovery.
Summit’s Miller told a congressional committee in February, "Each week that passes without a coal gasification plant with carbon capture and sequestration breaking ground allows yet another sub-par coal plant to be built that will needlessly foul the world’s air, soil and water as it operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for up to five decades. The time to build clean-coal plants with carbon capture is not today. It was yesterday."
Sweetwater Mayor Greg Wortham, executive director of the Texas Wind Energy Clearinghouse, is a strong advocate of Texas’ push for advanced clean-coal projects such as the Tenaska venture planned outside his city.
The proposed plant "is a microcosm of what the nation needs to do," said Wortham, who believes that the U.S. must rely on multiple energy solutions, including oil, natural gas, nuclear, coal, wind and solar power. "We’re not going to stop using oil or coal tomorrow," Wortham said. "Everybody can’t be in one corner and be purely oil, or purely coal, or purely solar or purely wind."
Online: Tenaska project, www.tenaskatrailblazer.com
Summit project, www.texascleanenergyproject.com