-March 9,2020-
Energy notes
Kern County’s future could include carbon sequestration
The Bay Area’s Lawerence Livermore Lab has proposed a green future for Kern County if they back plans to bury 125 megatons per year of carbon dioxide by 2045 through land management practices, waste material processing, capturing atmospheric CO2 and storing the gas deep underground.
This week the Kern Board of Supervisors said they would consider the plan.
The Bakersfield Californian describes the technology this way.
The findings draw upon technologies that have existed for years but have not been attempted at very large scale. They suggest the local economy might be able to avoid fallout from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to achieve carbon neutrality, in part, by managing the decline of California’s Kern-centric oil industry.
Notably, the report also points to Kern’s previously recognized geologic capacity for storing CO2 in oil formations deep underground.
Two ambitious “carbon sequestration” projects, one of which was abandoned in 2016 for various reasons, proposed permanently burying the gas in the county’s western reaches. Both initiatives touted the dual value of sequestering CO2 and using it to promote local oil production.
Authors at Lawrence Livermore wrote in a summary of their report, “Getting to Neutral: Options for Negative Carbon Emissions in California,” that the entire effort would cost less than $10 billion per year, or less than half of 1 percent of the state’s economic output.
“This, I call the ‘no kidding, this is actually how you do it, no miracles’ path to carbon neutrality, which not coincidentally has enormous opportunities for the southern San Joaquin Valley,” Steven Bohlen, a program manager at Lawrence Livermore, told supervisors on Feb. 25. “I gave a talk at the energy summit here in the fall, and the title of my talk was ‘Where Is the Next Valley of Innovation in California,’ and I made a case that it’s right here.”
The study calls for 17 million tons of carbon dioxide to be taken out of the air, through a method known as direct air capture, and stored underground. Kern County’s vast network of underground oil formations are ideal for storing CO2, according to the Livermore lab, introducing the possibility that after a hundred years of taking substances out of the ground, Kern County could be in for another hundred years of putting substances back in.
“We already know that nature has stored petroleum for millions of years, and putting CO2 in there — which is much like petroleum — it’ll stay there for millions of years as well,” Bohlen said.
They said their plan would create new jobs, mostly in the Central Valley and northern counties, and have environmental benefits apart from achieving a net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
“The value of pursuing negative emissions extends beyond carbon … and includes improved air and water quality, ecosystem health and resilience, wildfire prevention, exportable technological innovation and economic development in the Central Valley,” the authors wrote.
Fresno County Solar Projects Purchased
US-headquartered First Solar, Inc. announced this month that Longroad Energy has acquired four solar projects with a combined capacity of 160-megawatts. Located in Fresno County the projects, called Little Bear are backed by a long-term Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with a Community Choice Aggregator Marin Clean Energy (MCE). The projects, which range from 20MWAC to 50MWAC and are expected to be completed by the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, are designed to have a low impact on local land and water resources, and the environment. In addition to creating approximately 500 jobs during the construction of the facility, Little Bear Solar is also expected to benefit local businesses.
Longroad is owned by the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, Infratil Limited, and Long road Energy Partners, LLC.