A carbon capture proposal near Farmington will bring environmental degradation and cost our community dearly in the form of decreased air quality and immense opportunity costs.
What’s the Story with Carbon Capture?
The Backstory
Across the nation, utilities are ditching expensive, dirty coal and shifting towards a cleaner, more affordable portfolio. Now, the Four Corners Power Plant is finally following suit, and its owners plan to retire it in 2031. After decades of pollution and adverse health impacts levied by the plant onto workers and local communities, the shuttering of Four Corners would finally mean cleaner, healthier air for our communities.
Unfortunately, that future is at risk. An inexperienced company, Enchant Energy, wants to keep Four Corners open for business- a move that would both continue a legacy of contamination and prevent New Mexico communities from participating in energy transition. Enchant’s first effort at San Juan Generating Station flopped, and it’s now back with an identical plan to retrofit the Four Corners Power Plant, just 15 miles from its previously failure.
A Half-Baked Scheme
In early 2019, an inexperienced duo founded the company Enchant Energy Corporation (Enchant)and convinced the City of Farmington that they could keep San Juan Generating Station open with speculative carbon capture and carbon sequestration technology. Enchant is effectively proposing to dig up carbon sequestered in coal seams for millions of years, only to burn it and then attempt to (less efficiently) recapture and rebury it. It’s not hard to see how the environment, and our community, loses with the project.
Enchant’s proposal to keep San Juan Generating Station open with its unproven technology and skimpy experience predictably failed, but only after Farmington contributed millions of dollars to the doomed effort. Now, Enchant is back with an identical proposal for Four Corners Power Plant, and hopes to induce that plant’s owners to accommodate its experimental efforts.
Continued Emissions
Right now, Four Corners Power Plant is scheduled to shut down in 2031. Keeping the plant open means continuing a legacy of contamination. After decades of pollution and adverse health impacts levied onto local communities and workers, the shuttering of Four Corners would finally mean cleaner, healthier air for our communities. Keeping the plant open means continuing this legacy of contamination with what would effectively be nothing more than a carbon dioxide manufacturing facility.
It is time for the Four Corners Region to transition away from its historic dependence on fossil fuels and move towards a more sustainable energy economy so we can protect the natural resources of the region and preserve the health of its residents for decades to come.
False Hope for the Community
The proposal by Enchant disingenuously peddles unproven technology and sells the deceitful promise of a resuscitated coal economy in the Four Corners. Our communities are presented with a short window for transition and, at a time when our elected officials should be focusing on realistic and sustainable options for the future, the opportunity costs of blindly following the status quo are immense.
Northwest New Mexico is missing out on the chance to participate in energy transition because communities have been blinded by false hope of jobs and economic boon being promised by Enchant. Instead of being strung along by empty promises from Enchant, our community and its workers deserve the truth. And the truth is that Enchant Energy still lacks financing for its project, lacks power purchase agreements, lacks a buyer for the CO2 it plans to produce, lacks any guarantee of transmission or water rights, and has yet to deliver any sort of concrete plan that involves a realistic timeline.
The Issues at a Glance
The Bottom Line
Enchant’s scheme to retrofit Four Corners Power Plant with carbon capture is a loss.
It’s a loss for the environment, a loss for our community and a loss for all of the workers and entities being promised speculative jobs and financial benefits by the project. SJCA and our partners have been actively combatting the disinformation surrounding this project since its inception so that Northwest New Mexico can meaningfully participate in a just transition towards a renewable energy economy.
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