From the link:
Could Texas, whose governor dismisses global warming and opposes climate legislation, deliver the world’s first carbon-neutral coal-fired power plant? That looks increasingly likely thanks to a $1.75 billion project in West Texas that received a signed agreement last week for a $350 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The project, being developed by Bainbridge Island, WA-based Summit Power Group, combines carbon capture with domestic oil production, giving the plant something that few carbon capture and storage projects enjoy: demand for its greenhouse gas emissions. Summit plans to build a 400-megawatt power plant at its site in Penwell, TX, capture 90 percent of the emissions, and sell the nearly three million tons per year of carbon dioxide to oil fields across the Southwest. Oil and gas operators increasingly inject high-pressure carbon dioxide into their aging oil wells to reduce the oil’s viscosity and thus accelerate production, a process known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). “If we build this there won’t be any more dirty coal plants built,” says Laura Miller, the former Dallas mayor who leads the project for Summit.
Of course that last statement gives me a lot of pause on the entire endeavor. Laura Miller was the worst Dallas mayor in living memory by quite a long shot.
