Uncertain Future for Summit Power's Texas Clean Energy IGCC Project

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Earlier this month, Laura Miller, the director of projects for Summit Power Group Incorporated (Seattle, Washington), announced the company expects to release the details of a front-end engineering and design (FEED) study of the Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP). The announcement came after a similar project in Scotland received $6.2 million in grants from the Scottish government to support a feasibility study.

One of the key factors in the Texas project is its expected cost, a key component of which is labor. Miller said that labor prices are being reexamined through a process that involves "going back and obtaining the most current labor estimates, since the market has changed dramatically." The estimated cost of the TCEP is about $1 billion.

The 400-megawatt (MW), integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) plant is based on a 232-MW Siemens (Berlin, Germany) SGT6-PAC 5000F combustion turbine generator with a Siemens triple-pressure heat-recovery steam generator, and a 168-MW Siemens SST-900RH dual-casing reheat steam turbine generator in one-on-one combined-cycle configuration to capture 90% of carbon dioxide (CO2) for enhanced oil recovery. It would provide 214 MW to the electrical grid.

Support in Scotland, Possible Loss of Support in the U.S.
However, government support in Scotland is coinciding with the possible loss of government funding in the U.S. The TCEP is a recipient of $450 million in Recovery Act funding, which is meant to assist in the study of the feasibility of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). The funds could be revoked by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Those funds come with conditions that require funding to be committed by July 1 and spent by September 30. The delays that have dogged the TCEP are putting those funds in jeopardy.

The possible withdrawal of DOE funding is very real--the DOE recently suspended more than $1 billion in similar funds granted to the FutureGen IGCC project in Illinois since it was beset by delays and had trouble attracting private funding to finance the construction.

The TCEP project is not the only CCS project in Texas. NRG Texas Power LLC (Thompsons, Texas), which is part of NRG Energy (NYSE:NRG) (Princeton, New Jersey), and JX Nippon Oil Exploration (USA) Limited (Houston, Texas) started construction last year on a $1 billion project at the W.A. Parish Power Station. The Petra Nova CCS project is a commercial-scale demonstration of the Kansai Mitsubishi Carbon Dioxide Recovery Process (KM CDR Process). Captured CO2 from that project will be transported via an 83-mile pipeline and used for enhanced oil recovery.

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