Summit Power Launches Front End Engineering Design Study for Texas Clean Energy Project

Bainbridge Island, WA, July 21, 2010 --(PR.com)-- The Texas Clean Energy Project will be a first-of-its-kind integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) 400 MW power/poly-gen plant sited in West Texas’s Permian Basin, a hub of energy resource development and carbon sequestration activity. TCEP will integrate for the first time proven gasification and carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS) technologies to achieve a capture rate of 90 percent – among the highest proposed anywhere in the world.

Participants in the Texas Clean Energy Project FEED study include Siemens Energy Inc., Fluor Corporation, and Selas Fluid Processing Corporation, a Linde Group subsidiary. Siemens is the primary equipment provider for Texas Clean Energy Project’s gasifiers, power island and controls, including a “twin pack” of SFG-500 gasifiers, a state-of-the-art SGT6-5000F combustion turbine, and an advanced SPPA-T3000 control system. Siemens will also supply O&M services for the facility.

Fluor Corporation, based in Irving, Texas, is the project’s design engineer and one of the world’s largest publicly owned engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance (EPCM), and project management companies. The Linde Group is a world leading gases and engineering company with almost 48,000 employees working in more than 100 countries worldwide. Linde will be designing and costing the handling of the synthesis gas, produced by the Siemens gasifiers, including Shift and Gas Cooling, Rectisol® Wash Unit, Cryogenic Nitrogen Wash Unit, CO2 compression, mercury removal, sulfuric acid production, and ammonia production. Linde will also design an Air Separation Unit for the delivery of Nitrogen and Oxygen to the gasifiers and combustion turbine.

The Texas Clean Energy Project’s FEED team formally launched the study on June 30, 2010 and construction is currently scheduled to begin on the project in the second half of 2011 upon completion of the FEED study and financial close.

“We are extremely pleased to have reached this important stage on a breakthrough project that many on our FEED team have worked on for four years to bring to this point,” said Donald Hodel, Chairman of Summit Power and former U.S. Secretary of Energy. “We believe this project will take us a long way towards creating energy independence for the United States by finding a clean, sustainable way to use our country’s vast coal resources. We are proud to be building and creating jobs in Texas, grateful to state and local officials who have supported the project, and honored to be working hand in hand with the U.S. Department of Energy to achieve this mutual goal of developing clean fossil energy for the future.”

The project is intended as a model for carbon capture projects elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad. In December 2009, The Texas Clean Energy Project received a $350MM award, including funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, from the DOE Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI) – Round 3 to demonstrate the commercial integration of large-scale IGCC with CO2 capture and geologic storage.

“The Texas Clean Energy Project is a vital element within the Department’s portfolio of major demonstration projects,” said James Markowsky, Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy. "It is one of the key carbon capture and storage power projects essential to gaining the integration and operating experience necessary for commercial CCS deployment."

Summit chose Texas for its project due to the strong commitment of state and local elected officials, who believe that the state’s unique and longstanding experience in carbon sequestration – thanks to federally supported work by the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) and 30 years experience importing natural CO2 into the Permian Basin from surrounding states for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) – positions it as the national leader for carbon capture and sequestration. Because of the opportunity to earn revenue from CO2 for EOR, Texas is a particularly attractive site for these types of projects. Salt Lake City-based Blue Source, a leading emissions reduction project developer, will market the nearly 3 million tons of CO2 that The Texas Clean Energy Project will capture annually.

Summit Power is a 20-year-old company that has successfully developed thousands of megawatts and billions of dollars worth of U.S. power projects, primarily natural gas-fired and wind-powered, with solar power recently added. Summit’s prospective IGCC/CCS projects include The Texas Clean Energy Project, the Renewable Energy Corporation Project in Montana, and surface facilities for underground coal gasification (UCG) projects in the early stages of development by Laurus Energy as a licensee of Ergo Exergy. Summit is not a developer of conventional coal-fired power plants without carbon capture.

###