Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
07/27/12
The method by which the developers of the Indiana Gasification ‘clean coal’ project went about securing the plant’s emissions permit could set a sound pathway for other carbon capture, utilization and storage projects, an industry official said this week. In a speech at an event held by the Atlantic Council, Michael Moore, executive director of the North American Carbon Capture and Storage Association, said that because Leucadia National Corp. framed the CO2 captured at its proposed $2.8 billion Indiana Gasification facility as a commodity for state regulators and easily won a Title V air permit, other CCUS project developers should look to follow a similar approach. “They got a permit that says really the only greenhouse gas emissions that this gasifier has to deal with are the fugitive emissions of the process,” he said. “Why is that significant? It means that the CO2 is used as a commercial commodity and has never been intended as an [waste] stream when it was produced. Instead, it goes into enhanced oil recovery as a Class II [Underground Injection Control] permit. It’s a commercial process. End of story.”
Last month, Leucadia, via its subsidiary Indiana Gasification, secured a new source prevention of significant deterioration Title V air permit from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, bringing the proposed Rockport, Ind., project one step closer to construction. The project, which is set to receive a federal loan guarantee of $1.6 billion, will gasify 3.5 million tons of Illinois Basin coal annually, converting the feedstock into substitute natural gas that will be sold to the state. The plant will also capture 5.5 million tons of CO2 annually that will be piped more than 400 miles to the Gulf Coast for enhanced oil recovery operations, the company said.
Permit ‘Opens Up a Pathway’
Moore, who also works as vice president of business development and external affairs at Blue Source, LLC in Houston, said that other enhanced oil recovery or CCUS project developers should try and follow a similar pathway as Indiana Gasification. “There is going to be a lot of opinions on how this will look, how this will play, how this will work, but the one thing this does do is open up a pathway for large volumes of CO2 to get [permitted for] enhanced oil recovery from industrial processes that encourage even more efficient use of capture technologies to lower the costs,” Moore said. “It could also change the permitting of greenhouse gas issues and the long-term ramifications of stewardship liability for something that’s a waste that has been sequestered.” Moore added: “It has changed a lot of people’s perceptions as to what the next steps may look like in this space.”
While ‘clean coal’ advocates have cheered the Indiana Gasification project, it has received criticism from some local environmental and consumer groups. The Indiana chapter of the Sierra Club called the project “nefarious.” The Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana said that the project would be bad for the area. “Spencer County citizens already have to cope with the fact that the industries there emit more toxic pollutants into the air and water than are emitted in the cities of Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, combined. Residents have been making the connection between rising illnesses and the rising level of pollution. To add to this pollution is a bad choice for public health, the environment, and economic development in Spencer County,” the group said on its website.
