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UPDATE: NRG would like U.S. taxpayers to pick up half of the cost of the new equipment, but the company won’t say how much the equipment costs. NRG Energy may have finally found the government funding it’s been asking for to build a carbon dioxide capture and storage plant.
The New Jersey power company applied with the Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Intitiative program to build a demonstration unit at the company’s W.A. Parish coal plant southwest of Houston.
NRG said Tuesday in a press release the plant would begin operating in 2013. It would use Flour Corp. technology to process flue gas from the plant equal to a 60 megawatt unit. The technology is designed to capture 90 percent of the incoming carbon dioxide.
UPDATED MATERIAL: NRG wants U.S. taxpayers to pick up half of the cost of the equipment, but the company won’t say how much the equipment will cost. Spokeswoman Lori Neuman also wouldn’t say whether NRG would invest in the equipment without government help.
The captured greenhouse gases will be compressed and sold to oil producers for enhanced oil recovery. Producers in Texas often inject carbon dioxide into aging wells to boost production.
NRG didn’t say it will build a full coal gasification plant, though the company has considered it. NRG executives have said they can’t afford to build coal gasification in a deregulated market without some sort of government assistance.
(In regulated markets, the public utility commission allows power companies to recoup their entire investments by boosting electricity rates. Deregulated markets require a power company to build a plant on its own dime, and hope that selling the power will be profitable.)
NRG’s strategy for greenhouse gas emissions is to add more plants to its fleet that don’t emit carbon dioxide. NRG is building one traditional coal plant, and has said that’s the last one it is likely to build. Executives expect the U.S. to eventually limit the amount of carbon dioxide power companies may emit.
