Cleco Corporate Holdings LLC has announced it will be building a $900 million carbon capture project at a central electric plant in Louisiana.
The project is set to be built at the company’s Brame Energy Center, situated northwest of the city of Alexandria.
With the help of the ambitious new venture, Cleco Power aims to reduce the CO2 emissions of its largest generator units by 95%.
The captured carbon dioxide will be compressed and injected in geological formations underground for permanent storage.
Cleco Power is a regulated electric public utility company that provides electricity for some 291,000 residents of Louisiana.
The project has been given the name Diamond Vault and is expected to create as much as 1,100 construction jobs for the next three years and between 30 and 40 direct new jobs.
Gov. John Bel Edwards expressed his support of the company’s decision and in a statement on the matter encouraged other enterprises in Louisiana to pursue similar efforts to reduce their emissions as a response to the state’s new climate objectives.
Relevant: Air Products To Build Louisiana’s Largest Carbon Capture Project
The Cleco carbon capture project wouldn’t be the first facility of its kind in the state of Louisiana, though.
It will be joining the ranks of other planned carbon capture plants, such the $4.5 billion clean energy and carbon sequestration complex set to be built by Air Products in Ascension Parish.
So far, Cleco Power has raised $9 million of congressional appropriation that will be administered by Louisiana Economic Development to help cover the expenses of a front-end engineering and design (FEED) study.
Once the FEED study is completed, the utility company intends to raise about $900 million of capital funding via tax credits, private equity investment and grants from the Department of Energy.
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