Plan Scrapped for “Cleanest, Greenest” Power Plant

It was billed as the "cleanest and greenest" power plant when plans for construction were announced in 2006.

Now, a $1 billion project in Carson has been quietly abandoned.

The project would have been an early test of carbon-capture technology, in which carbon dioxide emissions are permanently stored underground. But the companies involved say the local geology turned out to be inhospitable, the Daily Breeze reported. They also encountered resistance from local environmentalists.

The Carson project exposed a rift between environmentalists who say that carbon-capture poses risks to surrounding communities and those who say it is essential to mitigating climate change, according to the newspaper.

"The mainstream environmental groups are supporting it, while us, the environmental justice organizations are opposing it," Jesse Marquez of the Wilmington Coalition for a Safe Environment told the Breeze. "There's a breaking in the ranks there."

BP America teamed up with Edison International to build the project, which would have been located next to the BP Carson refinery. The plant would have used leftover petroleum coke to generate electricity. The resulting carbon dioxide would be sold to Occidental Petroleum, which would pump it into the ground to improve oil recovery.

Susie Geiger, a spokeswoman for Occidental Petroleum, said that the company's geologists determined that the Wilmington Field was not amenable to a flood of carbon dioxide.

BP and Occidental have since announced plans to develop a similar project in Kern County, which would generate about half as much electricity as the initial proposal in Carson, the Breeze reported.