Plainview, Texas, lies between Lubbock and Amarillo,
on a highway whose speed limit is 75 miles per hour but
doesn’t seem to much matter. The town’s name fits: On
the early morning I visit, the pancake-flat landscape,
offset by a vast orange sky, affords what seems an endless
vista. Dominating the horizon on the eastern edge of town
are the seven 807,000-gallon fermentation tanks at an
ethanol plant owned by Frisco, Texas-based White Energy.
Ethanol, made in the U.S. primarily from corn, has
long been marketed as a clean fuel. But its production, a
process of fermentation that resembles—and smells like—beermaking, produces gobs of CO 2. Soon
after sunrise, I circle the plant with Brian
Steenhard, White Energy’s chief executive.
As we linger at the ethanol tanks, he points
to a pipe atop one. It belches as much as
350,000 tons of CO 2 yearly. White Energy’s
Hereford plant, an hour away, emits about
the same amount.
White Energy and Oxy have applied to the
California Air Resources Board, known as
CARB, to receive credits for capping thoseout of the atmosphere. Here’s how Carbon Engineering, a startup backed by Occidental and Chevron, carries out the process.
Some pellets
are hydrated
and recycled
back within the
system to
reproduce the
original capture
chemical.The CO2 gas is
compressed so it can be
delivered in gas form
ready for use or storage.The process, though
carbon-negative, is
energy-intensive and, for
These pellets now, expensive.
are then
heated in a
calciner, in
order to
release the
CO2 in pure
gas form.GAS STATION Excess CO 2 from this ethanol plant in Plainview, Texas, could eventually be stored in Oxy oilfields.CAR.W.04.20.XMIT.indd 65 FINAL 3/10/2020 8:24:20 PM