"Like Building A Typewriter Factory": NM City Wants Carbon Capture At Coal Plant By 1/1/23
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The city of Farmington in northwestern New Mexico partnered with start-up Enchant Energy to push for installing carbon-capture technology on the San Juan Generating Station, an 847-megawatt coal-fired plant near the Four Corners. If successful, the generating station would join a list of pilot projects aiming to show the effectiveness of the technology, which traps emissions of carbon dioxide. The city’s goal is to keep most of the 445 power plant workers and miners employed, meet air pollution targets, and pioneer technology that could be used in coal power plants elsewhere. But critics challenge that the technology has not been proven at this scale and comes with environmental and public health concerns. Whatever the outcome, it’ll have a disproportionate impact on 20 nearby Navajo communities both economically — as 40% of the power plant and mine workers are Navajo — and environmentally.
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When the Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM), the state’s largest electricity provider and managing owner of the plant, was asked to retrofit the 50-year-old San Juan Generating Station to comply with the Clean Air Act, the company decided instead to cut emissions by closing two of four units, which it did in 2017. It then scheduled the rest of the plant to shut down in 2022. New Mexico lawmakers have now mandated a statewide transition to 80% renewable power — the other 20% will be nuclear — by 2045. But that move would leave Farmington, the county, and local schools short of both hundreds of jobs with salaries above $88,000 a year and a significant chunk of their tax base — adding to a series of economic hits that have led to a declining local population. As the renewable power legislation worked through the state legislature, busloads of coal miners and plant workers made the seven-hour round-trip from Farmington to the state capitol to sit in every committee meeting and make the case for something like a parachute.
Enchant Energy offered that option in the form of carbon-capture and storage technology that could cut the plant’s carbon emissions by 90% while sparing the region an economic blow. The city, which owns a 5% share of the generating station, is working with Enchant to negotiate a buyout for the other utilities, including PNM, that own the generating station. State law requires the carbon-capture technology be up and running by January 1, 2023.
Ed. Emphasis added. Also, wait, wut?!!?
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“They’re absolutely right, it could be a huge game-changer in terms of technology,” says PNM spokesperson Ray Sandoval. “The problem is, we just haven’t seen them address some of these structural issues.” When deciding the San Juan’s future, PNM analyzed carbon capture and determined it would be more expensive than renewable energy, flexible natural gas, or battery storage. Once captured, Enchant plans to pipe carbon dioxide to use in extracting oil, which PNM speculates could violate New Mexico’s new carbon emissions rules. The system would also require 50% more water in an already drought-stricken region, and use 29% of the power generated to run the carbon capture machinery — with 40% more coal. As a less-flexible source, it could lead to curtailing renewable power use. They also project it would cost $1.3 billion more than PNM’s plan to decommission the plant and build a solar array. “When you take all this down, you have folks who don’t have any experience in running this type of project, trying to run a project on an older power plant on a scale that hasn’t been proven, with some economic models that keep changing and some real structural problems that they continue to fail to address,” Sandoval says. “That’s what’s kind of worrisome.”
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https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/10/a-new-mexico-city-hopes-carbon-capture-technology-will-save-its-coal-plant/