Tenaska, an independent power producer that develops and owns power plants, proposed to construct a coal-fired plant, east of Sweetwater. Summit Power Group, an operator of electricity generation projects, has proposed a $1.6 billion plant near Penwell, near Odessa, reported Star-Telegram.
Tenaska proposed 765MW coal plant which is expected to cost $2.5 billion, would power 600,000 homes, and would capture 85% to 90% of carbon dioxide emissions, Tenaska officials say.
The Tenaska project has ties with Arlington-based Business Development Group and will oversee the Tenaska Trailblazer Energy Center. Irving-based Fluor would be the prime contractor to the project. The building of the project would begin in 2010 and will be operational in 2015.
Dave Fiorelli, president and CEO of Tenaska’s Business Development Group, said: 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.”
Laura Miller, the former Dallas mayor who is director of Texas projects for Summit, said that the smaller projects use the integrated gasification combined technology method, but not by major plants such as the proposed Penwell plant. The plant would capture 80% to 85% carbon emissions. Siemens would operate and provide the plant with gasification system. After development the plant would be sold to someone else.
Summit would commence the construction of the plant in 2010 and the plant would be operational by late 2013 or early 2014, Miller informed.
Both the companies, planning to build coal-fired power plants in West Texas, say that their projects would develop clean-coal technology at the Lone Star State, and will meet the growing power demand in Dallas-Fort Worth, while increasing oil recovery in West Texas’ Permian Basin.
Both the West Texas plants would connect to the ERCOT power grid providing power all over the state, including North Texas. The carbon captured would be sold to enhancing oil recovery in Permian Basin fields.
Houston-based Hunton Energy, plans to propose a $2.8 billion project in Texas, that would use petroleum coke, biomass such as wood chips and coal to generate steam and synthetic gas, which would power Dow Chemical facility at Freeport on the Gulf Coast. Hunton Energy stated that this system would capture around 100% of carbon emitted from the plant, which can be used to improve oil recovery.