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TXU partners plan IGCC, carbon-capture demonstration plants |
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The leverage-buyout partners involved in the takeover of TXU Corp. followed up promises to reduce air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions today by announcing plans to build two integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) demonstration plants with carbon-dioxide capture in Texas.
"It's time to start exploring how we bring better technology to Texas so we can generate clean, affordable, reliable power in the future," said Michael MacDougall of Texas Pacific Group, which with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. formed Texas Energy Future Holdings Limited Partnership to take over TXU.
Carbon injection technology has been in use for more than three decades to force oil and natural gas from depleted wells. But the Energy Department predicted this week that carbon sequestration and capture technologies will not be in wide commercial use until mid-century.
Proposals from companies that want to build the plants will go before TXU's new Sustainable Energy Advisory Board. Its members include representatives of two environmental groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense; utility customers; Texas economic development officials; and representatives of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
TXU will select two or more competing IGCC technologies that can be developed and commercially deployed with CO2 capture in power plants that burn Powder River Basin and lignite coals, respectively.
The proposals must focus on two major objectives: research and development aimed at improving the efficiency, cost and environmental performance of gasification technologies; and front-end engineering and development for IGCC units at existing sites originally reserved for pulverized coal units that were suspended when TEF announced its takeover of TXU.
Both IGCC plants and their more traditional pulverized coal counterparts are capable of capturing and sequestering CO2, the most abundant greenhouse gas. Stu Dalton, director of generation at the Electric Power Research Institute, told a House panel this week that cost differences between a new pulverized coal plant and an IGCC plant would be comparable once all of the different technology additions were included.
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