NET Power and CRC Team to Deploy 1 GW of Carbon-Free Gas Power Plants in California

NET Power, developer of a novel gas-fired power plant that captures all atmospheric emissions, will explore deploying up to 1 GW of power capacity in Northern California with partner California Resources Corp. (CRC), California's largest oil and gas producer. 

CRC’s carbon management subsidiary, Carbon TerraVault (CTV), and NET Power signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Dec. 9 to conduct feasibility studies on siting NET Power’s modular facilities near CTV’s underground storage reservoirs. Each plant is expected to generate 250 MW on less than 20 acres, with multi-plant configurations under consideration, NET Power said. The collaboration aims to reduce carbon dioxide transportation costs and midstream investments while facilitating the permanent sequestration of up to 3.6 million metric tons of CO2 annually.

The agreement marks a stunning entry for NET Power into the energy market in California, a state that is committed to phasing out its reliance on natural gas and achieving 100% renewable and zero-carbon energy resources for retail sales by 2045 as part of its 2018 100% Clean Energy Act (SB 100). 

In 2023, about 58% of California’s total 281 TWh power generation came from non-carbon capacity, including nuclear, large hydroelectric, and renewables. But it still produced 37% of its power from natural gas, and its percent of in-state generation from natural gas stood at 44%. A key reason is that despite its progress, California faces challenges in balancing renewable energy expansion with grid reliability and infrastructure constraints, particularly during peak demand and extreme weather events.

A Virtually Emissions-Free Novel Gas Power Technology

NET Power’s technology is founded on the NET Power Cycle, a novel generation system that combines oxy-combustion and a supercritical CO_₂ (sCO_₂) power cycle to produce electricity while inherently capturing virtually all CO_₂ emissions.

In a nutshell, the oxycombustion process mixes fuel with oxygen, resulting in byproducts from combustion that only consist of water and pure CO₂. Meanwhile, the sCO₂ power cycle, in a closed or semi-closed loop process, replaces the air or steam used in most power cycles with recirculating CO₂ at high pressure, as sCO₂, producing power by expanding sCO₂ continuously through a turboexpander. The process virtually eliminates traditional air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), and particulate matter, while achieving a drastically lower lifecycle carbon intensity of 40g to 75g CO_₂e/kWh compared to conventional natural gas power plants, NET Power says.

[caption id="attachment_181005" align="alignnone" width="1024"]

NET Power’s platform uses a semi-closed loop cycle that inherently captures CO₂ and produces power. It does so by combining two processes: oxy-combustion, which produces CO₂ and H₂O, with a supercritical carbon dioxide power cycle (that was formerly referred to as the Allam cycle but is now branded as the NET Power cycle). The CO₂ from oxy-combustion is recirculated back to the combustor and a portion (~820,000 tonnes per year for the second-generation design) is exported for utilization or sequestration. Courtesy: NET Power[/caption]

NET Power is validating its technology at a 50-MWth demonstration project in La Porte, Texas. Since breaking ground in 2016, the project has achieved successful grid synchronization in 2021, 1,500 operational hours as of December 2023, and critical milestones toward commercial scalability. The company is now working to complete its first utility-scale plant—“Project Permian”—a 300-MW gas-fired power plant based on the novel sCO₂ power cycle at an Occidental-hosted site near Odessa, Texas. The commercial power plant is expected to begin construction in 2025 and come online in the 2027–2028 timeframe.

During an earnings call in November, NET Power CEO Danny Rice outlined significant progress for the novel technology. “We continue to focus our efforts on developing and proving our technology at the utility scale, which starts with Baker Hughes’s validation testing at our La Porte facility,” he said. “We recently kicked off phase one of our equipment validation program with Baker at La Porte, which will result in the down selection of the oxy-fuel burner.”

The effort will mark a “critical step” as part of a four-phase testing program at La Porte through 2026, he said. NET Power notably also recently selected Air Liquide as its air separation unit supplier for Project Permian’s front-end engineering design (FEED) phase, he said. "The air separation unit represents one of the major equipment components of a NET Power plant,” he noted. In tandem, the company is pursuing permitting, securing land and supply agreements, and interconnect applications for the project.

Meanwhile, though technology development is ongoing, NET Power is actively pursuing “an extensive shadow backlog of projects by tackling the low-dollar, early development work now, such that when our first utility-scale project is up and running, we have that visibility into where the next ten-plus originated hubs can go, each hub with the ability to support 2 to 20 [NET Power] plants,” said Rice.

A recent market study conducted with Boston Consulting Group, which surveyed targeted North American competitive markets—MISO, ERCOT, PJM, CAISO, and AESO—showed “serviceable opportunity as high as 2,000 NET Power plants—focusing on the areas with sufficient CO₂ storage and infrastructure in place,” Rice added. “And again, this opportunity set is before moving into regulated markets with utilities,” he said.  “In our view, by leveraging cheap and abundant natural gas, NET Power presents as the lowest cost, quickest to market option to provide clean, affordable and reliable power, and we’re focusing on executing against our strategic pillars to ensure we can realize this massive opportunity set here in North America.”

NET Power’s advantage—a quick-build source of baseload, scalable, clean power—is emphatically pitted against early-stage nuclear companies, Rice noted. “But load growth will not wait a decade for new generation solutions to be proven out,” he said. “With Project Permian coming online in 2027-2028, we’ll be in an excellent position to capture a meaningful portion of this demand, nearly a decade ahead of other potential solutions.”

[caption id="attachment_166739" align="alignnone" width="1024"]

The NET Power Plant in La Porte, Texas, utilizes NET Power’s Allam-Fetvedt Cycle technology. It converts natural and renewable gas into zero-emissions power. The plant achieved first fire in May 2018, becoming the world's first large-scale supercritical carbon dioxide power plant. Courtesy: NET Power[/caption]

CTV: A Strategic Partner for NET Power's Deployment

The MOU positions CTV as an “early strategic partner in the deployment of NET Power’s power technology,” said NET Power on Monday. CTV, a 2021-formed joint venture between CRC and Brookfield Renewable, is developing both infrastructure and storage assets required for carbon capture and storage (CCS) development in California, including to advance the use of reservoirs for permanent CO₂ storage.

"Including this agreement, CTV’s CCS projects under consideration total approximately 7.8 million metric tons per annum (MMTPA) of CO₂ emissions and, if successful, would enable up to 2.1 GW of new, low-carbon power capacity in California,” the companies said on Monday.

CTV’s developing portfolio is rooted in CRC’s operations across California’s major oil and natural gas basins, including the prolific San Joaquin Basin, where CRC manages the Elk Hills field, 20 miles west of Bakersfield in Kern County. At Elk Hills, one of the most productive U.S. fields, CRC operates the 550-MW gas-fired combined-cycle Elk Hills Power Plant. It also operates natural gas processing facilities, including a cryogenic gas plant in California, with a combined gas processing capacity of over 330 million cubic feet per day, and a 45-MW cogeneration plant to provide steam and electricity to the field as needed. The site is home to some of CTV’s projects, as well as the proposed  CalCapture and California DAC Hub projects.

In October 2024, CRC notably received conditional use permits for its Carbon TerraVault I (CTV I) CCS project at its Elk Hills field from the Kern County Board of Supervisors. CTV is targeting a final U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Class VI permit (which regulates wells used for geologic sequestration of CO₂) for the "CTV I-26R" reservoir—CTV's first capture-to-storage project at CRC's Elk Hills cryogenic gas plant. “Per the EPA tracker, we expect to receive our final EPA Class VI permits for CTV I 26R reservoir next month,” said Francisco Leon, CRC’s president and CEO, during an earnings call in November. “Shortly after receipt of the EPA permit, we expect to [final investment decision (FID)] and break ground on our first carbon capture-to-storage project at our Elk Hills gas processing plant.”

CRC is targeting greenfield CCS, which includes projects designed from inception to produce low-carbon products (like renewable natural gas, clean hydrogen, and enhanced geothermal power). It suggests these products inherently have lower carbon intensity than traditional gray products, and their substitution creates a "virtual pipeline" that displaces higher-carbon products in the market. However, CRC also supports brownfield CCS efforts, which help existing emitters capture and store CO_₂ emissions, enabling them to lower the carbon intensity of their products through conventional pipeline transport.

Recently, it announced its first brownfield MOU with Hull Street Energy, a California power producer, for the proposed sequestration of up to 1.5 MMTPA by 2030. Hull Street Energy, through its subsidiary Milepost Power, owns the 585-MW Sunrise CCGT facility in  Fellows, the 240-MW CCGT facility in Crocket, and the 48-MW simple cycle plant in Oxnard.

In October 2024, CTV also secured significant funding under the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) CarbonSAFE initiative for two key projects in California. The Elk Hills CO₂ Storage Project (EHStore), led by California State University Bakersfield in partnership with CTV, received $27 million in DOE funding—covering 80% of its $34.4 million total cost—to accelerate the characterization, permitting, and development of storage for more than 50 million metric tons of captured CO2 over 30 years. The project focuses on repurposing multiple depleted oil and natural gas reservoirs at the Elk Hills Oil Field in Kern County, California, for Underground Injection Control (UIC) Class VI storage. Additionally, CTV and the Colorado School of Mines were awarded $8.9 million for a feasibility study of the CTV III CO₂ Storage Project in San Joaquin County, targeting the long-term storage of up to 71 million metric tons of CO_₂.

CTV's CCS-to-Power Pursuit

In all, CTV suggests it has identified up to 1 billion metric tons of CO₂ storage in California, a region it notes that has a “large amount of potentially available and stackable incentives for CCS development.” Its partnership with NET Power, notably will explore the transportation and storage of CO₂ from NET Power’s facilities in the range of 3.6 MMPTA.

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Carbon TerraVault’s CCS-to-Power initiative envisions approximately 145 million metric tons (MMT) of “premium” carbon dioxide (CO₂) storage capacity in Northern California. In December, the company partnered with NET Power to explore power solutions of up to 1 GW in the region. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) aims to transport and store up to 3.6 million metric tons per annum (MMTPA) of CO₂ from NET Power’s facilities. Courtesy: CRC Corporate Presentation (December 2024)[/caption]

“This partnership with NET Power combines our strategically located carbon storage and natural gas assets with California’s call for more clean power. We are solidifying our position as a leader in carbon management solutions in the Golden State,” said CRC CEO Leon. “CRC is committed to advancing innovative clean energy solutions while attracting new investments to California. Together, we are working to meet our state’s critical power needs with new, reliable, and low-carbon energy.”

NET Power’s Rice agreed:“CTV is an industry leader in advancing responsible and safe carbon sequestration in California, and we look forward to collaborating with them and local stakeholders to unlock the full potential of CTV’s world-class assets responsibly,” he said. “CTV possesses the resource potential to support the deployment of many NET Power facilities in California. This partnership can strengthen California’s pathway to achieve its environmental and energy goals while attracting new businesses that value 24/7 low carbon power—all made possible by our innovative ultra-low emissions technology in collaboration with CTV.”

—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).