Editors Note: This article was originally published in the Sept. 27, 2023 issue of the Chronicle Progress. Some information may be outdated.
State legislators got a preview last week of a report prepared as part of legislation passed earlier this year to study the feasibility of keeping Intermountain Power’s two coal units burning long after a new natural gas and green hydrogen plant is up and operating.
A preliminary report was issued through the Utah Office of Energy Development and discussed by the legislature’s Public Utilities, Energy, and Technology Interim Committee on Sept. 18 in St. George.
The report presented detailed regulatory, financial, technical and risk analyses along with a few options for moving forward should the legislature make a move to acquire the units, which are capable of generating 1,800-megawatts of electricity.
The report’s production was ordered and funded through HB 425, sponsored by Rep. Ken Ivory and co-sponsored by Sen. Derrin Owens, who represents the east half of Millard County.
Among the options introduced to lawmakers included converting the plant from just a power-generating operation to one focused also on creating graphite, rare minerals and hydrogen byproducts for use in industry.
The report cites an unnamed company that is bringing the technology to convert coal into graphite and other elements into commercial viability.
“The company that proposed the coal conversion option has demonstrated commercial viability, albeit at a smaller scale than would be necessary for continued operations at IPP,” states the report, which was created by Texas-based law firm Jackson Walker. “Despite this fact, the company has purchased another coal fired power plant in the United States and is currently in the process of implementing their technology at that location. The coal fired facility owned by the company is of a comparable size as IPP and will demonstrate the technologies viability at a scale sufficient for implementation at IPP.”
One unique benefit noted in the report from a coal conversion is the creation of large amounts of potable water.
“This valuable resource could be available to the state or for use in the hydrogen production facilities at the IPP hydrogen project,” the report states.
The report also states that a coal conversion offers the lowest emission profile for the site and provides for the shortest timeframe among the options offered.
Two other options assess that the units can remain in the power-generating space but be retrofitted with carbon capture and sequestration (CCUS) technology. One of these options was called the “local load creation and CCUS option,” and the other called the “standalone CCUS option.”
The carbon capture options both show an expensive retrofit would be required, potentially costing more than $1 billion.
Various technologies are mentioned as well as possible carbon storage sites, including the salt domes underneath IPP. Several alternative sites were noted by the Utah Geological Survey, including nearby basalt formations.
“Storage in basalt has significant advantages when successful because the captured carbon tends to mineralize and solidify over short periods of time. However, storage in basalt is untested in the United States, despite its success at facilities in Iceland,” the report states.
Two other options for storing captured carbon were noted. They were saline aquifers, one 30-40 miles from IPP, the other 100-130 miles south of the power plant.
The report noted that piping captured carbon and sending it via pipeline could also weigh financially given the $1.5 million to $3 million cost per linear mile of pipe.
In a risk analysis of the two CCUS options, the report stated: “Potential risks associated with the two CCUS options are technological, market and public perception based, and regulatory in nature. As mentioned herein, while the technology has been proven at a handful of sites to be commercially viable at a scale comparable to what would be needed at IPP, CCUS is still not widely commercially demonstrated and there have been a number of commercial failures.”
Mike Nasi, a Jackson Walker partner and environmental law specialist, told state legislators last week they could expect a completed final report as soon as the end of October.
Asked for comment, an IPA spokesman said the report compiled a lot of information very quickly and made clear there are significant barriers to continuing operations at the IPP coal units beyond 2025.
“The preliminary report correctly shows that major regulatory and market barriers exist to continuing operation of the IPP coal units and that proposals to address those barriers are all highly speculative and likely to require billions of dollars of investment,” the spokesman, John Ward, said via email.
Ward noted that IPA was contacted for the first time about “one month before the preliminary report was presented and only two meetings with IPA had been held so far.”
But IPA hopes, Ward said, to continue to work with state legislators and Jackson Walker consultants on a final report.
In a plug for IPP Renewed, the new gas and hydrogen power plant under construction, Ward wrote that the project represents “billions of dollars of new investment in Millard County and is being accomplished with no taxpayer dollars or economic development incentives.”
IPA is the county’s largest taxpayer.
Last year, IPA’s board of directors rejected an offer to sell all of the electric utility’s assets.
In September 2022 Farmington, New Mexico-based Enchant Energy and Orem-based Fibernet offered to purchase the power plant in a plan to use power generated there to operate giant data centers. The companies also planed to retrofit the coal units with carbon capture technology.
The companies a month later sought to buy all of IPA, including the plant, transmission assets, water rights, land holdings, power contracts, and bonds. The companies had sought help on the bid from state legislators, Ward confirmed at the time.
