• Wyoming pushing to become a leader in CCS installations

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      Patrick Lavery

      Combustion Industry News Editor


Wyoming Public Media has carried an article examining the US state’s push to promote carbon capture, utilisation and storage, seeing it as a potential lifeline for the coal industry in the region. The state last year passed a carbon capture standard in an effort to make a clear regulatory framework conducive to investment, and has also helped in the construction of transport infrastructure and a demonstration storage project. With this in place, strong federal tax incentives also available, and the federal USE IT Act (Utilizing Significant Emissions with Innovative Technologies Act) having passed in late December of last year, investment is coming. An imminent project is Jupiter Oxygen’s retrofitting of Pacificorp’s 922 MW coal-fired Dave Johnston power plant in eastern Wyoming, the four units of which are scheduled for retirement in 2027. The retrofit is due to commence in 2022, with the various parties expecting it to extend the life of the plant, and Jupiter Oxygen is looking at six other projects in the state which in total would capture 6 million (metric) tonnes of CO2 per annum, at a capital cost of US$2 billion (€1.6 billion). It seems Wyoming will become an interesting case of a region making a firm push to prolong the use of coal by the wide deployment of CCS.