DOE ISSUES FINAL EIS FOR W.A. PARISH

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
3/15/13

A stimulus-funded carbon capture and storage project in Texas would have “negligible to minor” adverse impacts on the surrounding area’s air quality, geology and groundwater but ultimately adheres to the goals of the Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI) program, the Department has concluded. NRG Energy’s W.A. Parish CCS project in southeast Texas moved one step closer to a final investment decision after DOE published its final environmental impact statement on the project in the Federal Register late last week. The document examines the potential environmental impacts associated with the project, which is slated to receive a $167 million grant from the stimulus-funded CCPI program. The EIS is part of DOE’s decision-making process to see whether to actually provide NRG with the money for the $339 million CCS retrofit project. “This is an important milestone for this project and one that brings us closer to being able to break ground on the carbon capture system,” President of NRG subsidiary Petra Nova Arun Banskota told GHG Monitor.

Overall, the document concludes that the project “would impact” the surrounding environment, and could lead to “potential negligible to minor adverse impacts” to local air quality, geology, groundwater, as well as soils and wetlands. It says that there may be a stronger degree of adverse impacts, “potential moderate,” to surface water, biological resources, land use and aesthetics, noise, and materials and waste management. But the EIS also concludes that the project carries some potential beneficial environmental impacts, “primarily related to regional socioeconomics and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, but also related to some aspects of air quality, geology, groundwater and utilities.” The W.A. Parish project “would not contribute to adverse GHG impacts in the [surrounding region]. The estimated GHG reduction attributable to the proposed project would result in overall beneficial impacts,” according to the report. “Cumulative impacts are also not expected for the geology, human health and safety, or environmental justice resources areas because the [project] is not expected to interact with other reasonably foreseeable future actions with regard to these resource areas.”

Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), DOE also evaluated “reasonable alternatives” for the project, including not building the capture unit, and said that there is value to the project. The Department was also required to calculate whether the project ultimately supports the goals of the CCPI program as required under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which includes demonstrating advanced coal technologies at commercial scale and sequestering CO2 emissions. The EIS ultimately concludes that W.A. Parish does support those goals. Comments are being accepted on the EIS until April 8.

NRG Made Some Tweaks to Project

The publishing of the final EIS is the latest step in a long permitting process for the retrofit project that has stretched on for nearly 18 months. DOE held its first two local public scoping meetings in late 2011 ahead of publishing a draft EIS in September. That kicked off a public comment period and two more public hearings on the draft EIS last fall. NRG said that following those events, it made some refinements to the project, such as implementing minor changes to its proposed pipeline route to address landowner concerns, increasing the length of access roads near the future construction site and examining the planned pipeline to quantify risk to human health due to a sudden release of CO2.

NRG shifted its plans for the project somewhat dramatically last summer when it decided to bring the 80 MW natural gas turbine that will eventually power the capture unit’s compressors online early in order to temporarily generate peaking power for Texas’ grid, which has faced electricity shortages in recent high seasons due to increased demand. “By leveraging the planned construction of the carbon capture system and building the combustion turbine now, ahead of the economic price signals that would allow us to build new generation on its own, we can help the state of Texas meet its needs over the next two summers,” John Ragan, president of NRG’s Gulf Coast Operations, said at the time. NRG began construction on the turbine last fall and expects to have the unit online this summer, the company said.

The turbine will eventually power the compressors for the yet-to-be-announced advanced amine post-combustion capture system, which is slated to capture 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 a year from a 250 MW-equivalent slipstream off of the W.A. Parish Generating Station southwest of Houston. The CO2 will then be piped 81 miles to Hilcorp Energy’s West Ranch oilfield near the Gulf Coast for storage via enhanced oil recovery operations. The project has more than tripled in size compared to initial plans. When it first received its CCPI grant, it was only supposed to capture CO2 off of a 60 MWe slipstream. But NRG officials began kicking around the idea of scaling up at the urging of DOE after Phase I front-end engineering and design work revealed that it was feasible and the Department’s only other post-combustion retrofit demonstration project, American Electric Power’s Mountaineer, pulled out of CCPI. NRG spokesman David Knox said NRG plans on having the CCS portion of W.A. Parish operational by 2015 and that the utility plans on making a final investment decision on the project later this year. “We are continuing the engineering and other activities that will allow us to break ground on the project” later this year, Knox said.