{"id":23432,"date":"2013-01-23T14:43:06","date_gmt":"2013-01-23T20:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=23432"},"modified":"2013-01-23T15:53:44","modified_gmt":"2013-01-23T21:53:44","slug":"major-gulf-coast-coal-power-plant-canceled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2013\/01\/23\/major-gulf-coast-coal-power-plant-canceled\/","title":{"rendered":"Major Gulf Coast Coal Power Plant Suspended"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo by StateImpact Texas<\/p>

Piles of petroleum coke sit uncovered on the ship canal in Corpus Christi.<\/p><\/div>\n

Updated with statements from Chase Power and the Environmental Integrity Project.\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\n

After losing its air permit last summer<\/a>, the Las Brisas coal power plant proposed for Corpus Christi has been suspended. The news was first reported<\/a> in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“Chase Power … has opted to suspend efforts to further permit the facility and is seeking alternative investors as part of a plan of dissolution for the parent company,” Chase Power, LLC CEO Dave Freysinger\u00a0says in an emailed statement. He says that “while market conditions played a role, the direct regulatory obstacles purposefully erected by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) resulted in the decision to suspend development of the plant.” Freysinger tells StateImpact Texas that the power plant was a “major part” of its portfolio.<\/p>\n

Las Brisas was one of just a few coal plants still being planned for Texas. Now there is only one major coal plant still being considered, the White Stallion coal project in Matagorda County, and it, too, faces an uncertain future<\/a> amid opposition and a market more favorable to natural gas power<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As we reported in July 2012,<\/a>\u00a0the $3 billion Las Brisas plant “would have used petroleum coke \u2014 carbon solids left over from refining \u2014 for power generation in a way much like coal, with much the same emissions:”<\/p>\n

“It was first proposed in 2008, and is the only proposed coal plant within a city\u2019s limits in the entire country, according to the Sierra Club. It would sit on the northern side of the Corpus Christi ship channel, across from a residential area known as \u201cRefinery Row<\/a>,\u201d which already sits in the midst of six major refineries.<\/p>\n

The plant was given an air permit in January 2011 by the TCEQ. A\u00a0challenge to that permit was brought by a coalition of\u00a0environmental\u00a0groups, including the\u00a0Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Corpus Christi\u00a0Clean Economy Coalition<\/a>, and several Texas cities.<\/p>\n

But a judge found several things wrong with how the Texas\u00a0Commission\u00a0on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) processed the permit, and said it failed to meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act, among other issues.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After the permit was reversed in July, it went back to the TCEQ for revision. But since then the company financing the project has gone out of business.<\/p>\n

\u201cChase Power currently holds a worthless piece of paper from the\u00a0state environmental agency, and the company still needs major federal and state air and water permits in order to lawfully begin construction,” Ilan Levin, associate\u00a0director for the Environmental Integrity Project<\/a>, said in a statement. “It is time for Chase Power to concede that the proposed Las Brisas power plant is finished.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is one new coal plant scheduled to come online this year, the Sandy Creek power plant east of Waco. It faced its own issues and delays after an accident in the fall of 2011<\/a>. If it starts running as expected<\/a>, it could well be the last major coal power plant in Texas for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Updated with statements from Chase Power and the Environmental Integrity Project.\u00a0 After losing its air permit last summer, the Las Brisas coal power plant proposed for Corpus Christi has been suspended. The news was first reported in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. “Chase Power … has opted to suspend efforts to further permit the facility and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":10647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[229,182,96],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23432"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23440,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23432\/revisions\/23440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}