FARMINGTON — A study into the feasibility of installing carbon capture generation at the San Juan plant drew complaints from the bankruptcy director of the state’s Sierra Club, who said New Mexico is looking forward rather than going back in history and resurrecting a shuttered coal company. Power plant fired power station.
Enchant Energy’s full carbon capture front engineering design (FEED) study for the San Juan power plant was released last week. The study, which lasted years, was conducted in part with the budget of the U. S. Department of Energy. It began under the U. S. administration.
However, implementation of the plan depends on many factors, adding the move of the power plant to the city of Farmington and Enchant, and then approval through the state’s Environmental Improvement Board of an air movement permit, permission to build a carbon capture system, and an exemption to allow the facility to operate despite new, stricter emission criteria that They will take effect in January 2023.
The head of the state’s Office of Clean Air said she may simply not be waiting for how things will play out, however, the procedure for obtaining an exemption from regulations required through the state’s Energy Transition Act would result in a public hearing and public participation procedure.
“The FEED exam successfully established and explained the technical requirements, scope, schedule and costs of the allocation to upload carbon capture generation to the San Juan Generating Station,” Enchant Energy’s announcement said in part. “. . . Once the carbon capture facilities are built and fully operational, the plant will operate capturing 95% of the carbon dioxide emissions produced. “
“The FEED exam was incredibly successful from an engineering and allocation control perspective,” Cindy Crane, executive director of Enchant Energy, said in the statement. at the San Juan plant. “
The plan calls for carbon dioxide captured at the San Juan plant to be permanently stored in underground formations near the plant, but some is meant to be sold and shipped via pipelines to companies in the Permian Basin to help them extract more oil from their wells. . .
“The carbon-sequestrated San Juan plant is located to supply reliable, low-carbon power much earlier than the prospective structure of a nuclear power plant and with atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions much lower than the production of herb-based fuel without carbon capture,” Enchant’s said.
The Farmington Electric Utility System (FEUS) faces major long-term effects if the power plant doesn’t reopen, according to city spokeswoman Georgette Allen.
“FEUS price lists were recently approved in April 2022, which kept price lists constant for the utility,” he said via email. Energía. Si we are unable to continue operating SJGS, we will have to conduct a review of the service fee for the time being, and based on the higher buying force prices in the market, our rates are likely to increase. rate adjustments are based on the effects of SJGS’s continued operation.
Allen said FEUS’ power generation portfolio “includes 44% of the fuel generation owned and operated through the app at our Bluffview station, 19% of the coal production of our SJGS property, 15% of the hydroelectric generation of our Navajo hydroelectric plant or the company. “agreements with the Western Area Power Authority (WAPA) for the company’s electric service and 22% of the purchased electric power. »
If SJGS’ power is lost, the app will have to be purchased on the volatile open market to fill the void and keep lighting fixtures on until a new power generation source is built or long-term procurement deals are reached, he said.
“The top-ranked portfolios in our newly incorporated resource plan have distributable generation from application construction and near-term solar,” Allen said.
Any move to reopen the forced plant will require state approvals, as well as the consent of several plant owners to move the entire facility to one co-owner, the City of Farmington and Enchant.
This is lately the subject of an arbitration proceeding and, apparently, the procedure is moving rapidly.
“There is no consistent start date as the two selected arbitrators are running to agree on a third arbitrator,” Allen’s Nov. 16 email read. “Lately we are working with the state to find a way forward related to air permission and a prospective waiver. “
Part of this authorization procedure would consist of public hearings, and several teams opposing the reopening of the plant have already published positions celebrating the closure of the plant in September 2022. The head of one of those teams saw with bad eyes the news and the efforts to reopen. the plant.
“MV’s Environmental Improvement Board has followed the CO2 emission limits that will take effect in 2023, as required by the landmark Energy Transition Act of 2019,” said Camilla Feibelman, director of Sierra Club: Rio Grande Chapter.
“Enchant has not said how it will comply with ETA’s CO2 limit until carbon capture can be installed,” Feibelman said. “In addition, CCS’s proposal will do nothing for the enormous environmental damage caused by the San Juan coal plant and mine, adding NOx pollutants that contribute to smog, coal mining methane and poisonous coal ash. “
In addition to environmental aspects, Feibelman said the basic viability of the project appears fragile, especially in the face of unanswered questions and outcomes.
“And questions remain about who will invest in this plant, who will take care of it, how the electric power will be transmitted and who will even buy it,” Feibelman said. “We want to build a long-term economic on reality, not an ever-changing schedule. “
The process of moving the plant’s air permit is an administrative task, but the messes of installing a new generation of carbon capture — and running the plant for a while — open up a long process.
Once they get the permit, it will have to be reviewed “to apply for permission to build a carbon capture system,” said Office of Air Quality leader Liz Kuehn, “and will most likely be challenged by stakeholder groups. “
Processing the amended permit can take at least a year, he told the Daily Times.
The other component is the repeal of ETA’s stricter air release criteria for the plant, standards followed this year through the Air Council that will take effect in January.
The search for this hole begins with a proposal to the state through the city and Enchant, followed by the advice of air quality chief Kuehn to the environmental improvement council of s, then a public hearing and a vote of the council,
“I can’t be waiting for the final results of the council,” he said, if the case were to be officially reviewed.
That’s partly because regulatory rules are strict and, he noted, “quite limited. “
“It’s not guaranteed success, given the barriers,” Kuehn said.
Despite the potentially winding path to authorizing the acquisition and the expected opposition from environmental groups, the tone of Enchant’s announcement related to FEED seems optimistic.
“The effects of the FEED test are very positive,” Farmington Mayor Nate Dukett said in the statement. “The successful final touch of the FEED exam is a milestone for the San Juan Carbon Capture Project, which will allow the plant to resume operations. and provide reliable, cost-effective strength to consumers in Farmington’s application system. “
It describes the carbon capture formula of the plant’s “core technology” as “a proprietary amine-based solvent carbon dioxide capture formula developed through Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America, Inc. , (MHIA). “
The now-closed Petra Nova plant in Texas used an earlier edition of the same type of generation in 2016 “in the wake of a coal-fired boiler,” he said.
“We are incredibly pleased that our generation has effectively joined the FEED to upload carbon capture to the San Juan plant,” Timothy Thomas, senior vice president of MHIA’s Engineering Systems Division, said in the statement. “Carbon capture generation is gaining momentum as a way for countries around the world to meet the need for reliable and environmentally friendly electric power generation. “
When the San Juan plant burned the last coal materials in late September, the Boulder, Colorado-based advocacy organization Western Resource Advocates coordinated responses from some of the teams that fought to shut down the plant.
“The closure of the plant has important positive and negative implications. A positive effect is the planned release of ETA’s budget to help ensure the self-sufficiency of the communities that have been affected by the plant,” Duane “Chili” said. Yazzie of ToohBAA, the Shiprock Traditional Farmers Cooperative, said in the September press release: “Our farmer organization in Shiprock has implemented the budget in the hope that they will help fulfill one of our farmers’ wonderful desires, with the provision of professional labor. With the budget, we plan to gain machine operators, diesel mechanics, planners and managers to help us organize our agricultural activity to maximize our agricultural potential. We look forward to the immediate release of those budgets. “
Site recovery and cleanup is also the purpose of some network members as the plant is dismantled. Water rights are another domain of fear for some, as the San Juan power plant was a primary user of water, however, they noted that “some of the plant’s water rights have now been allocated to operate on the San Juan River. “
“We now have the opportunity to protect and manage water resources in the Four Corners,” said Jessica Keetso of Tó Nizhóni Aní, Navajo Nation. Valuable water resources have been used to force giant power plants into the Four Corners region for more than part of a century. These water resources are limited and have been compromised in many areas. position in a concerted and immediate manner, and that ETA’s investments are offering communities affected by coal the opportunity to boost economic diversification.
Another organization spoke out in September in favor of installing election strength material and money set aside for workers who quit their coal jobs.
“As citizens of Four Corners, we need to look at the choice of electricity, sun and energy storage, and we need ETA’s implementation cash to move to coal and affected communities,” Mike Eisenfeld of the San Juan Citizens Alliance told Western Resource. lawyers. ” Enchant Energy has been cheating and irresponsible about the progress of its project, which joins a long list of failed carbon capture and sequestration projects funded through the Department of Energy. “
While some applauded the disappearance of the forced plant, others noted that the loss of a local employer would have serious repercussions and praised the efforts of the town and Enchant to save local jobs.
Four Corners Economic Development reiterated its decision on Sept. 30 to acquire SJGS through Farmington/Enchant.
“4CED strongly supports the City of Farmington and Enchant Energy in their efforts to modernize SJGS with carbon capture technology,” the organization said in its newsletter. “The renovation task would mean many good-paying jobs and an investment of more than a billion dollars in the tax base of the economy and assets. “
New Mexico House Minority Leader Jim Townsend used the station’s closure as a fundraiser in a Sept. 30 email.
State Sen. Bill Sharer (R-District 1) who represents San Juan County also weighed in and wrote a comment about the plant’s closure and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s role in it. He called on the governor to oppose the trend and reopen the plant with carbon capture. technology.
“Enchant Energy is in a position to build a facility that removes 95% of the CO2 generated through the power plant,” Sharer wrote in part. “Today, all other pollutants are in a position captured and kept out of the environment. I just had the cleanest coal-fired power plant in the world.
“Instead, the governor’s political allies came here and denigrated the solution. They called carbon capture “unsustainable” and called Enchant “inexperienced investors. “Today, instead of a facility, we have a ghost town. »
The SJGS shutdown and a legal war over long-term use of the forced plant between Farmington and the plant’s other owners are positioning themselves as a task presented as an example of a working carbon capture facility being sold at a low price to a Japanese company that helped build it.
A U. S. company The U. S. government sold its stake in Petra Nova’s closed coal power plant this fall, which many say exemplifies a carbon capture facility in operation at a reduced price.
NRG Energy Inc. , a Texas plant staker that installed large-scale carbon capture generation but had to close for economic reasons, sold its percentage of the billion-dollar facility for $3. 6 million to the Japanese company that helped build the plant. .
Nippon JX Oil