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EPA and Texas Railroad Commission Sign Memorandum of Agreement for Permitting Geologic Storage of Carbon Dioxide

LCG, April 29, 2025--Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) today outlining the state’s plans to administer programs related to carbon storage wells, known as Class VI wells. The MOA signing is a required step in the RRC’s application to be granted authority to permit Class VI wells in the state of Texas. EPA is currently preparing a proposed approval of RRC’s primacy application.

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Calpine and ExxonMobil Sign CO2 Transportation and Storage Agreement for CCS Project in Texas

LCG, April 24, 2025--Exxon Mobil Corporation (ExxonMobil) announced yesterday an agreement with Calpine Corporation (Calpine) to transport and permanently store up to 2 million metric tons per annum (MTA) of CO2 from Calpine’s Baytown Energy Center, a natural gas-fired facility located near Houston, Texas. This is part of Calpine’s Baytown Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Project that is designed to add CCS for the facility’s CO2 emissions. The Calpine facility could then provide a 24/7 supply of low-carbon electricity to the Texas grid plus steam to nearby industrial facilities.

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Industry News

Cal-ISO to Line Up Band-Aid Power for Next Summer

LCG, Oct. 5, 2000the governors of the California Independent System Operator yesterday sent the Cal-ISO staff in search of temporary peaking power to help the agency avoid the power crunches that threatened to force rolling blackouts all summer long this year.

Due to a strong economy fueled by a power-hungry high tech industry, and because regulatory fiddle-faddling has delayed the development of new power plants, the state's demand for electricity has outstripped its ability to produce power. It is estimated that Silicon Valley, in the southern San Francisco Bay Area, has a power demand that grows by 10 megawatts per day.

During this past summer, Cal-ISO was forced to declare an unprecedented 31 "stage two" power emergencies this past summer, and ask utilities to conserve power.

Yesterday's action by the ISO's Board of Governors will allow the purchase of up to $255 million worth of peaking generation. The projects under consideration amount to about 2,000 megawatts, after a preliminary evaluation based on environmental, economical and reliability considerations.

Patrick Dorinson, a spokesman for Cal-ISO, said "The board approved management to pursue agreements for temporary peaking power generators that would be used to maintain electric reliability during the summer months."

The ISO would have the right to call on the peaking power for up to 500 hours during the summer season, between June 1 and October 31, in exchange for a capacity payment. The ISO would require that the generation be scheduled in the forward markets as much as possible. An astonishing 25 percent of power purchases this past summer were made in the highly volatile spot market.

Owners of the units would be allowed to run the plants whenever they wished and participate in the markets on their own, so long as it did not interfere with Cal-ISO's ability to call on those plants when needed to ensure reliability.

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