Suncor to spend $57 million to curb air pollution in Commerce City

Suncor Energy is planning to spend greater than $57 million to scale back greenhouse-gas emissions at its Commerce Metropolis oil refinery, however nonetheless expects to overlook its 2030 deadline to eradicate sufficient air pollution to fulfill Colorado’s benchmark for industrial polluters.

Not solely will the corporate miss its 2030 greenhouse-gas emissions deadline, which is required by state legislation, however Suncor says its Commerce City refinery by no means will meet Colorado’s discount calls for until the state creates a fund to assist firms finance initiatives that may decrease emissions, in response to a brand new report the corporate filed with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

“Regardless of this main capital funding, onsite reductions will likely be inadequate to fulfill Suncor’s GHG emissions necessities,” the corporate’s report states.

Suncor’s funding in 5 initiatives at its Commerce Metropolis refinery and its dedication that it can not meet the state’s calls for have been revealed in a greenhouse-gas discount plan posted on the state well being division’s web site this month.

Suncor and different massive industrial polluters are required to submit plans explaining how they will reduce emissions underneath a state rule that requires Colorado’s 18 largest industrial producers to scale back their total greenhouse-gas emissions by 20% by 2030. Up to now, eight firms have filed their plans, and Suncor is one in all three firms that stated it is going to wrestle to fulfill the state’s discount necessities.

The opposite two are Natural Soda and American Gypsum, and each wrote of their reviews that whereas they’ll improve some tools, it won’t be sufficient to fulfill the state’s pollution-reduction calls for.

American Gypsum, a drywall producer in Eagle County, stated it is going to purchase greenhouse-gas credit on Colorado’s change market and alter its manufacturing to make a drywall that could be a totally different dimension and thickness to succeed in its benchmark. The credit score change permits firms that fail to fulfill benchmarks to purchase credit from others that efficiently lower emissions and use these credit to account for his or her extreme air pollution.

Pure Soda, which mines and makes baking soda in Rifle, stated it might additionally depend on the greenhouse-gas credit score change till different expertise was extra possible and cost-effective.

The opposite firms which have filed greenhouse-gas discount plans are Cargill Meat Solutions in Fort Morgan; Golden Aluminum, a sheet steel provider in Fort Lupton; JBS Swift Foods, a meat processor in Greeley; Sterling Ethanol, an ethanol plant in Logan County; and its sister plant, Yuma Ethanol, based mostly in Yuma County.

These producers stated they’ll substitute getting older tools and undertake new expertise to succeed in their objectives. For instance, the 2 ethanol crops will use a carbon-capture system by which carbon dioxide is collected after which despatched via a pipeline to be saved deep underground.

Cargill’s report stated it might recycle biogas created from anaerobic wastewater therapy lagoons to energy on-site boilers.

Of these eight firms, Suncor is essentially the most high-profile as a result of it is without doubt one of the largest polluters in Colorado and it’s near densely populated neighborhoods in Commerce Metropolis and north Denver. The refinery has been underneath stress for years to scrub up its facility and has been fined for repeated violations of its federal air permits, which regulate how a lot air pollution it’s allowed to emit annually.

Suncor denied JS’s request for an interview about its emissions-reduction plan and despatched an emailed assertion that repeated what the corporate wrote in its report.

In its greenhouse-gas discount plan, Suncor says it is going to improve expertise in 5 areas, together with bettering two flares — often known as smokestacks — that burn off gases created through the refining course of. Suncor is looking for state approval for one flare undertaking that may reroute gasoline to a extra fashionable stack and decommission an older, 100-foot stack that has been in operation for 75 years, in response to its plan.

The opposite measures the corporate is proposing embrace enhancements to its fluidized catalytic-cracking models, which assist flip crude oil into gasoline, and putting in carbon monoxide analyzers to make sure tools is operating effectively.

These 5 initiatives will lower 31,129 tons of carbon dioxide yearly, the report stated.  However Suncor wants to scale back its greenhouse-gas emissions by 133,266 tons yearly to adjust to state rules, its discount plan states.

In Suncor’s emailed assertion and within the written report, the corporate stated it’s a pioneer in energy-efficient refining. “As background, the Commerce Metropolis refinery has lengthy been an energy-efficiency chief within the refining sector — each amongst these refineries supplying Colorado and amongst equally sized refineries nationwide.”

Nevertheless, that assertion contradicts the findings of a 2023 Environmental Safety Company report that stated the Commerce Metropolis refinery data extra malfunctions that launch poisonous chemical compounds into the air than different equally sized crops in the USA.

Suncor included an evaluation and a letter from HSB Solomon Associates, a marketing consultant it employed to research and examine its Commerce Metropolis emissions to different refineries, and that letter acknowledged Suncor is the “better of the very best” in its carbon emissions in comparison towards different refineries within the Rocky Mountain area.

“Because of Suncor’s excessive stage of effectivity in its operations, there may be little or no low-hanging fruit to additional scale back GHGs on the Commerce Metropolis refinery,” the report acknowledged.

As a result of the corporate stated it can not spend extra money to fulfill the state’s greenhouse-gas limits, Suncor plans to make use of Colorado’s new greenhouse-gas credit score buying and selling system, which was created when the Air Quality Control Commission wrote rules in 2023 that required the state’s largest industrial polluters to scale back emissions.

That rule was created after the Common Meeting handed a 2021 law aimed toward bettering the standard of life in neighborhoods most impacted by air air pollution and decreasing Colorado’s influence on local weather change.