It appears SouthWestern Power Group is changing their plans for the Bowie Power Station.
We learned last Wednesday through public notice that the Cochise County Board of Supervisors will be holding a hearing on Sept. 18th to consider SWPG's request to "extend a deadline for construction of a natural gas electric generation plant which expires on September 24, 2007." The stated purpose of the extension is: "to provide sufficient time for adequate professional and technical review of the revised IGCC proposal, while retaining an active status for the originally approved natural gas facility."
However, just this morning we learned that SWPG issued a press release yesterday afternoon, in which they announced their plan that the Bowie Power Station "run solely on clean natural gas". This change "reverts the project back to the configuration as originally permitted by Cochise County and the Arizona regulators in 2002."
In the release, David Getts, General manage of SWPG, is quoted as saying: "While we continue to believe in the benefits of IGCC technology, we are enthusiastic about building an important project in Bowie and a clean-burning natural gas facility has the best chance of being permitted, constructed, and successful within a reasonable timeframe."
The release also says: "The project has already been granted a Certificate of Environmental Compatibility by the Arizona Corporation Commission, an air permit by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and a conditional use permit by Cochise County. The remaining regulatory requirements will be completed in early 2008 and construction will begin as soon as possible thereafter."
There is no information about this on the SWPG website (last news there on the Bowie Power Station project is dated in June 2006), and the Bowie Power Station site is under revision. All that appears there at this writing is "Please check back shortly. August 31, 2007."
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3 comments:
Hmm, not perfect, particularly on the CO2 front, but at least this is a small step in the right direction. I hope they'll still endeavor to capture some of the carbon.
Incidentally, there are some promising developments in algae fuels, which are made using the carbon from power plants.
Re: Algae - there's some interesting things happening close to home.
Arizona Public Service Co. is capturing CO2 from its Red Hawk plant west of Phoenix to grow algae, which is then refined to ethenol and biodiesel.
Diversified Energy, in Gilbert, is developing low-cost
algae production systems, planning to have demonstration projects in Arizona this fall.
And it looks like there's some possible movement with solar. I haven't found anything more about this, but LS Power Group announced in March 2007 that it is exploring both stand-alone solar thermal and solar integration power production in Maricopa county.
My bet is they never really planned to build either type of plant but just got the permits and plan on selling to the highest bidder. I also think this power might be headed to Mexican Nafta factories but no one will admit it.Picture a giant power line running through Apache Pass.
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