Abby L. Harvey
GHG Daily
1/15/2016
Today is the final day for interested parties to file comments with the California Energy Commission (CEC) regarding the Hydrogen Energy California (HECA) project’s application for certification. Late last year, CEC staff recommended the termination of the HECA application. The project’s developer, SCS Energy, in mid-July received a six-month extension to obtain its certification, essentially suspending the project. According to the CEC staff filing, however, the project will not meet the requirements of that suspension.
The HECA project, as initially planned, would be a new-build, pre-combustion 390-megawatt integrated gasification combined cycle CCUS project. Certification by the CEC is necessary for the project to be licensed under the California Environmental Quality Act.
Following the submission of the staff recommendation, the commission announced that it would treat the recommendation as a motion and that interested parties were welcome to comment by Jan. 15, after which time the commission will schedule a public hearing on the matter.
Only two additional comments have been added to the docket since the commission’s announcement, one by SCS CEO Jim Croyle and one by a citizen group opposed to the project, the “Association of Irritated Residents.”
Croyle defended the project, explaining that several requirements of the suspension order were no longer applicable. For example, the suspension order required that SCS provide the commission with documentation of an executed CO2 off-take and carbon sequestration agreement with a partner, for a site that is both feasible and available for such use, the document says.
SCS had been in the process of signing such an offtake agreement with Occidental Petroleum, but in February 2014, the company announced the spinoff of its California operations. At that time, it appeared the newly formed California Resources Corp. (CRC) would continue to work with HECA to develop an agreement. However, due to reported “internal issues” at CRC, these discussions have fallen off.
HECA is now working with scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as well as the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (WESTCARB), to develop a storage-only option for its CO2. “This approach eliminates the need to contract with a CO2 off-taker, as well as the need to permit facilities and analyze associated environmental impacts at a site other than the Project site, all of which greatly simplify the environmental review and permitting of the Project,” Croyle said in his comments.
A further requirement of the suspension demanded HECA respond to several outstanding data requests from CEC. These requests are outdated, Croyle said. “The majority of outstanding data requests relate primarily to facilities and activities that were to occur on and in the Elk Hills Oil Field for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and CO2 sequestration. These data requests pertained to both surface impacts … and the details of the proposed EOR and sequestration. Given that both the proposed location and nature of the sequestration have changed, the outstanding data requests are no longer relevant.”
In response to the data requests, Croyle instead offered three new mitigation measures that he said are a better fit to a storage-only model for the project. First, HECA will develop a water mitigation program to “offset the project’s average operational use of groundwater above the historical baseline for the site.” Second, HECA will provide funding for the installation and operation of an air quality monitor. Finally, HECA will “offset direct project impacts to prime farmland at a 2:1 ratio via the establishments of a conservation easement or fee payment, by which we attempt to address community concerns about farmland impacts.”
These new commitments seem to be too little, too late for the Association of Irritated Residents (AIR). “Regarding the proposed mitigation measures from Mr. Croyle, they are without substance making them nearly meaningless. They are insufficient because of a lack of details although they are important for future discussion if the project ever gets going again. For now, these mitigation proposals are simply another area of incomplete information and data analysis proving the project is not ready to move forward,” the group wrote in its submitted comments.
