Exxon Mobil has reached an agreement with Calpine Corporation, the US’s largest producer of electricity from natural gas, to transport and permanently store up to 2 million metric tons per annum (MTA) of CO2 from Calpine’s Baytown Energy Center, a cogeneration facility near Houston.
The plan is part of Calpine’s Baytown carbon capture and storage (CCS) project designed to capture the facility’s CO2 emissions, enabling the 24/7 supply of low-carbon electricity to Texas customers as well as steam to nearby industrial facilities.
The agreement marks ExxonMobil’s sixth CCS customer, bringing the company’s total amount of CO2 under contract to approximately 16 MTA.
The CO2 from Calpine’s facility will tie into ExxonMobil’s CO2 pipeline system, the largest in the world, which is located along the U.S. Gulf Coast and supports enhanced oil recovery as well as permanent CO2 sequestration.
Calpine’s Baytown CCS project expects to produce about 500 megawatts of low-carbon electricity, enough to power more than 500,000 homes, as well as steam for industrial use. Engineering, permitting, and other development activities are underway.