Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
10/10/2014
Summit Power Group and CPS Energy this week signed a new power purchase agreement for power generated at the Texas Clean Energy Project being developed near Odessa, Texas. The two parties had been in negotiations since CPS let a prior agreement expire at the end of 2013 due to project delays and a changing energy landscape, a CPS release said. The new PPA, according to the CPS release, is “more favorable to CPS Energy customers,” due to a drop in power prices in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas market in recent months. “We remained hopeful this project would be built and that CPS Energy customers could take advantage of this low-carbon source of power,” CPS Energy CEO Doyle Beneby said in the release. “Adding clean coal to our portfolio dovetails with our strategies to diversify and reduce the carbon intensity of the power we supply to our customers.”
TCEP will be a 400MW coal integrated gasification combined cycle facility that will incorporate carbon capture and storage. The project, when completed, will capture 90 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions, which will be used for enhanced oil recovery in the West Texas Permian Basin. The project is funded, in part, by a $450 million award by the Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative. The plant would be one of the first to use a poly-generation business model, which allows the plant to produce and sell electricity, and provide captured CO2 for enhanced oil recovery, urea fertilizer and other chemicals for multiple revenue streams.
The project is currently awaiting financial closing, which is expected to be achieved by June 2015. “Summit remains committed to providing from TCEP to CPS Energy, for resale to the people of San Antonio, the cleanest and lowest-carbon power the world will have yet seen from a hydrocarbon-based power plant,” said Eric Redman, Co-Chairman of Summit Power Group, in a statement. “We are gratified that CPS Energy remains committed to this goal as well, which has helped make San Antonio well-recognized and celebrated in the clean energy sector throughout the world.”
