A draft solicitation for a carbon-free power project at the Hanford Site in Washington state could be released within a month, a senior adviser with the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office said during an online presentation Tuesday.
Hanford was the first DOE Office of Environmental Management property to hold a “Cleanup to Clean Energy” information day, and the agency is working on a draft request for proposals (RFP) based upon the comments, DOE’s Candice Robertson said Tuesday.
Robertson spoke during an Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) presentation on energy development on federal land. During the Oct. 31 presentation, Robertson said the draft RFP could be out “next month” which would seemingly translate into late November or early December. A DOE nuclear energy official said last week the agency would like to see its first clean energy award within a year.
The other two speakers were Peter Flynn, a co-founder of Bostonia Partners, which has helped line up financing for billions of dollars of power projects, as well as Seth Kirshenberg, ECA’s executive director.
As an attorney, Kirshenberg said he has worked on many electric power projects on Department of Defense land.
“This is not a short process,” Kirshenberg said. There are a multitude of administrative issues —ranging from the structure of any leases or power purchase agreements — to successful completion of National Environmental Policy Act and National Historic Preservation Act reviews, Kirshenberg said.
“Reality requires financing for these projects to occur,” Flynn said. Financiers of power projects value transparency, standardization and scale, he said. The investors like projects that are not too exotic and can probably be put together on time and within budget.
“New and untested technologies are often difficult to finance,” and such financing can be expensive, Flynn said. In addition, these are “turbulent times” for capital markets and interest rates could loom large, he said.
