The US Department of Energy (DOE) selected NRG Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NRG) to receive up to $154 million, including funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to build a post-combustion carbon capture demonstration unit at NRG’s WA Parish plant southwest of Houston.
The proposed project was submitted under the Clean Coal Power Initiative Program (CCPI), a cost-shared collaboration between the federal government and private industry to demonstrate low-emission carbon capture and storage technologies in advanced coal-based, power generation. The goal of CCPI is to accelerate the readiness of advanced coal technologies for commercial deployment.
Critics of carbon capture say it will lead to continued reliance on dirty, coal-fired power and that funding would be better spent on transitioning to cleaner energy sources. The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report on so-called "clean coal" analyzing the risks and opportunities.
Scheduled to begin operating in 2013, NRG’s carbon capture demonstration project at WA Parish will be among the first of its kind. It will use Fluor Corporation’s (NYSE: FLR) Econamine FG Plussm technology to process flue gas from the plant equal in quantity to that of a 60 megawatt unit. It will be designed to capture 90% of incoming CO2, or approximately 400,000 metric tons of CO2 annually. Once captured, the CO2 will be compressed and used in enhanced oilfield recovery operations.
NRG is also involved in wind power and solar development.
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