Thanks to a co-operative agreement with the US Department of Energy (DOE), Hydrogen Energy California LLC (HECA) will build a hydrogen powered electric generating facility in Kern County, California, with carbon capture and storage.

The company, owned by Hydrogen Energy International, BP Alternative Energy and Rio Tinto, plans to build an advanced integrated gasification combined cycle plant that can produce power by converting fuel into hydrogen and carbon dioxide using a blend of 75 per cent coal and 25 per cent petroleum coke. This hydrogen will then be used to power a combustion turbine which generates enough electricity – around 250MW – to power more than 150,000 homes.

Around 90 per cent of the CO2 it produces from the gasification process will be transported via pipeline to the Elks Hill oilfield, which is less than four miles away, where it will be sequestered in an enhanced oil recovery application.

In an effort to limit the use of California’s fresh water sources, the proposed plant will maximise the use of non-portable water. It is part of the Clean Coal Power Initiative, which is a cost-shared collaboration between private industry and the Federal Government aimed at increasing investment in low emission coal technology.

The estimated cost is $2.3billion to be cost shared by the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and the National Energy Technology Laboratory. The Federal cost-share is limited to $308million – just under 11 per cent of the total project costs.