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HB 4384/Vaught (Temporary moratorium on authorizations for coal-fired or petroleum coke-fired electric generating facilities)
(Similar to SB 126/Ellis)
Prohibits the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, a municipality, or a county from accepting an application for or issuing a permit, permit amendment, license, variance, or any other authorization relating to the construction of a new coal-fired or petroleum coke-fired generating facility.
Applies to applications that are pending when the Act is adopted. Does not apply to projects that will capture at least 60% of the CO2 generated by the facility and sequester it in a geological formation.
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Charlie Randall Comments:
This bill (even in Texas) would still allow projects with natural gas equivalent carbon capture, which is a burden for gasification but unproven-at-scale for combustion facilities such as PC and FBC.
But this bill WOULD stop the White Stallion and Las Brisas petcoke projects along the Texas Gulf Coast (not that they seemed to have much of a chance of progressing in the current credit market anyway).
Of course, the Texas legislature only meets every other year and there are a dozen bills introduced every day. I would not expect this to get much traction in Texas, although other states have already put similar measures in place. Let’s not take risk, it is just part of Environmental thrust to get petcoke & coal banned as power source or preventing any new plants from going in. Your job may depend on this so – call your Texas Legislature rep’s and tell them your view on this and give your company a head’s up that they need to block this Bill! -
AnonymousIs there any update on this yet?
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This WAS the update on this issue. As article mentioned the Texas legislature only meets once every other year and they wont be back to it until after next year.
Also the original SB 126 bill against Coal Plants (to which TX has added petcoke) started around Aug 2007 time frame and latest info back from it was in March 29, 2009 where the topic had hearing/public review – that was expected to be uphill in Texas (who knew). Their goal was to kill off 29 New Coal plants ……. The new Anti-Fossil Environmental actions have (so far) across US killed/cancled nearly 59 new coal fired plants – and I think someone has spreadsheet out on the web for who & where they were, just Google Search for them.
A great deal of the petcoke use in Power plants is for a blend of coal & petcoke, relative few operate at 100% petcoke like the Nelson or Wabash power projects.
So when you kill off the new coal application you take future petcoke use along with it in most cases. (Gasification projects are somewhat the exception since the products are often other / more than just steam & power). -
AnonymousThanks.
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