A $4.6 billion plant will make ammonia ‘the fuel of the future’ at a facility in South Carolina called Liberty Canyon.
This is one of three plans for producing ammonia that could be built after the Energy Department’s 2020 goal for renewable energy is achieved.
President Donald Trump said he would withdraw the executive Order he issued in early 2017, which called for the use of renewable fuels in federal buildings and vehicles by 2026.
The Energy Department has a $21.1 billion budget for the fiscal year starting October 1 and a $6 billion target to produce renewable energy at the federal level during that time. It is currently responsible for building some 1,600 MW of wind and solar energy projects.
In the coming fiscal year, DOE, under the leadership of its director, Rick Perry, is expected to take on projects to design, build and operate the nation’s first wind and solar electric plants.
While in Florida, Perry visited a new solar power plant development that has been operating since 2016.
Perry said, “It really just gives me a chance to talk directly to the folks.”
The plant at Liberty Springs Solar is the first of 40 planned solar power generation sites that Perry will visit from Florida to New England this week. The President spoke at the site, which had been proposed as a solar energy plant at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. The site is scheduled to be completed in 2020 and will begin producing 1,000 megawatts of power.
The President thanked the company and plant officials, saying, “I couldn’t even have done it as well if I tried. I want to thank you guys for building a plant that is going to be really something. And all of that really is being driven by the President of the United States.”
The President’s visit to the SRS site comes as many states and cities are struggling to meet their renewable energy goals with only a few dozen or even hundreds of MW of power generation capacity available.
Perry said he wants to use the SRS site for energy production and to generate wind power for the White House.
The President said he was proud of the SRS’s success and is planning to expand the site. Perry said he would like to be able to turn the SRS into an energy manufacturing facility and add an even bigger facility to boost