Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
12/5/2014
NRG Energy has announced plans to cut its carbon emissions 50 percent by 2030 and 90 percent by 2050 below a 2014 baseline by increasing the development and use of renewables and carbon capture and storage. “Our portfolio allows us to pursue everything from fuel conversions and carbon capture and sequestration to renewables and distributed technologies. We have already started to demonstrate our lower carbon strategies with our asset revitalization program and with NRG Carbon 360, our carbon capture business that includes our Petra Nova project at W.A. Parish, southwest of Houston,” NRGG Chief Operating Officer Mauricio Gutierrez said in a release issued Nov. 20.
NRG, in a joint venture with JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration in Japan, broke ground on the Petra Nova CCS project in September at which time NRG CEO David Crane said the company will pursue additional CCS projects. The Petra Nova project will capture approximately 1.6 million tons of CO2 annually from an approximately 240 megawatt (MW) slipstream of flue gas from W.A. Parish Unit 8, according to an NRG release. This equates to a 90 percent capture rate. The project stands to be the world’s largest post-combustion carbon capture facility installed on an existing coal plant. The CO2 captured will be transported roughly 80 miles via pipeline to the West Ranch oil field, which NRG has purchased a stake in. There it is expected that the CO2, which will be used for enhanced oil recovery, will enable the procurement of approximately 60 million barrels of oil.
