PG&E Solar-Biomass Project Abandoned
California’s now-frenzied race to reach 20 percent renewable energy by the end of 2010 took a 107-megawatt step backward this week, as plans for a solar and biomass hybrid power plant were abandoned. PG&E and Luxembourg-based Martifer Renewables had been planning construction of the power plant for two years, but Martifer recently wrote the California Energy Commission (CEC), announcing that it was pulling out due to extensive delays stemming from local environmental concerns.
The San Joaquin Solar 1 & 2 power plant was to be located in the San Joaquin Valley near the town of Coalinga.
The area is one of the nation’s top agriculture-producing regions but has been troubled lately by drought and the resulting lack of water for irrigation. Therefore, already sensitive resident farmers found several concerns with the 640-acre power plant that would have helped significantly in the CEC’s renewable energy efforts.
The power plant was to utilize concentrated solar power (CSP) during the day, using the sun’s heat to boil water, creating steam to spin an electricity generating turbine. At night, biomass, or agricultural waste, from local farms would have been burnt in place of the solar thermal energy in order to continue plant operation around the clock.
However, the plant’s proposed location, Fresno County, happens to be troubled with some of the worst air pollution in the United States. So local residents were worried about the 60 to 80 annual truck deliveries of farm waste, including trimmings, clippings and sometimes manure.
They also took issue with the amount of water the plant would consume, an understandably sensitive issue in the drought-stricken valley.
Eventually frustrated beyond the breaking point, Martifer Renewables finally withdrew, shelving the project indefinitely — most likely for good.
Nevertheless, the San Joaquin Valley and Fresno County hold excellent potential for solar energy, whether the CEC meets its ambitious 2010 renewable energy goals or not. As the folks at Triplepundit point out, there are plenty of unanswered questions surrounding the abandoned project. Perhaps someday soon, researchers will make significant enough strides in cellulosic biofuels to create a solar-biomass power plant that can also use farm waste to make the fuels that power the trucks delivering the waste itself.
The lost 107 megawatts would have been enough renewable electricity to power about 75,000 California homes.
Source: Triplepundit
Photo Credit: DEKB, Princeton & BC Daily Buzz
Posted on July 7th in Solar News by Dan.
July 7th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
So sad. NIMBYs everywhere. Does this matter, yes, a lot. It is indicative of man’s stupidity and why man will most likely end up as a footnote in time. We don’t just need one 107MW plant, we need perhaps 160,000 of them, or clean equivalents, (17TW worth) globally, including many many thousands in the US. Said again, we don’t need 1 or 2 in the US, we need thousands, possibly tens of thousands of these things. We simply do not have centuries to whinge and whine and stop progress, we simply will not exist at all if change does not happen rapidly starting now. CO2 is rising exponentially (if one does not understand the significance of ‘exponentially’, look it up) and fast. By 2250, the graphs are looking at CO2 rising towards 2000ppm (‘business as usual’ scenario), that is territory at least 6 times higher than anything seen since man began walking the Earth. All evidence and science suggests that we may well not survive that, tipping points will mean forests burn, reefs die (CO2 sinks), ice caps melting, seas rising, temperatures rising, whole populations migrating, but the real killer ultimately will be when the air cannot support us, too little oxygen and too much CO2. We all hope that this will not happen, but on our current course, it will. The sweet gift of extinction from our selfish selves to our innocent successors, children, grandchildren. Always remember, ‘We need the planet, the planet does not need us’.
July 7th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
My understanding of the failure of the project is a bit different. The referenced letter to the to the CEC states; “We were not able, at this time to resolve some of our issues regarding project economics and biomass supply amongst other things.”
http://www.energy.ca.gov/sitingcases/sjsolar/documents/applicant/2010-06-17_Notice_of_Withdrawal_TN-57296.pdf
Martifer Renewables is a Portugal based company whose stock was just removed from the index as it collapsed, like their National economy.
http://www.martifer.pt/renewables/projects/index.html
CEC staff stated;
“delivery trucks) would contribute nearly 300 tons per year of inhalable particulate matter under
ten microns in diameter (PM10). For comparison, a natural gas-fired power plant of this
capacity would typically generate much less than 100 tons per year PM10.” pg. 6
http://www.energy.ca.gov/sitingcases/sjsolar/documents/2009-03-25_Issues_Identification_Report_TN-50654.PDF
The application states;
“The emissions from the delivery trucks were estimated based on 12 hours per day, 5 days per week, and 200 days per year operation schedule. The miles traveled per round trip were assumed to be 1.4 miles on site and 120 miles for each delivery truck.”
http://www.energy.ca.gov/sitingcases/sjsolar/documents/applicant/afc/AFC_volume_01/Section%205.02%20Air%20Quality.pdf
What killed the poorly planned project in my view was that it would cost more, take more energy and pollute more to deliver the biomass than its value. The bankrupt Portuguese company couldn’t build it anyway. We need small scale distributed generation.
Rob Simpson