DEP invites comments on planned Mason County biomass and carbon-capture facility

Biomass is organic material that comes from plants and animals that can be burned for heat or converted to liquid and gaseous fuels.

The biomass-fired boiler with a unit for capturing carbon dioxide would be roughly 1,300 feet from a cluster of residential homes, according to a DEP engineering evaluation in which DEP Division of Air Quality Engineer Edward Andrews recommended the division go to public notice with a preliminary determination to issue the requested permit.

The public comment period set by the DEP ends Sept. 18.

The DEP has yet to set a public comment period for MGS H2 1’s air quality permit application for its planned 265-million-standard-cubic-feet-per-day hydrogen production facility near Point Pleasant, which the agency received on Aug. 7. The DEP received the MGS CNP 1 permit application in February.

MGS CNP 1 and MGS H2 1 share their Houston addresses with Fidelis. In 2023, the West Virginia Economic Development Authority approved a forgivable $62.5 million loan with a three-year term for Fidelis subsidiary Mountaineer GigaSystem LLC, which was formed to develop a hydrogen production facility in the Point Pleasant area.

The loan from the then-Department of Economic Development, now the Division of Economic Development within the Department of Commerce, is to be forgiven if Mountaineer GigaSystem meets preconstruction, employment and investment benchmarks. Those benchmarks include, within six years, employing at least 125 full-time equivalent employees that earn an average of $110,000 annually in salary and wages and Mountaineer and its affiliates investing $2 billion in project development, per the memorandum of agreement.

In 2023, then-Gov. Jim Justice‘s office said Fidelis planned for data centers to be powered by net-zero carbon hydrogen as part of its Mason County hydrogen production plan, with data center capacity potentially reaching 1,000 megawatts when fully built out.

The Justice administration announcement spurred environmental and economic concerns due to its planned buildout of infrastructure to support an unproven energy system that could commit pore spaces underlying state properties, including state forests, for storing carbon dioxide.

Justice’s office said Mountaineer would implement proprietary technology that enables hydrogen production with zero lifecycle carbon emissions from a combination of natural gas, carbon capture, use and sequestration, and renewable energy.

Carbon capture, use and sequestration is an umbrella term for technology that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and uses it to create products or stores it permanently underground. It’s unproven at commercial scale, fueling environmentalist concerns the state is making an unwise, fossil fuel-supported investment in Fidelis in the guise of clean energy.

Mountaineer GigaSystem subsidiaries acquired the rights to buy four contiguous properties totaling over 1,000 acres in the area for the project.

Fidelis vice president Jack Calhoun and permit consultant Michael Dearing of Environmental Resources Management Inc. have not responded to a request for comment.

Site would be 'minor source,' play carbon credit role 

MGS CNP 1 told the DEP all electricity generated by a steam turbine generator at the biomass-fired facility would be consumed by the facility, which wouldn’t be connected to the local electrical grid. The steam turbine generator wouldn’t produce excess electricity for the local grid or any onsite user like a data center. Electricity for startup would be provided by a 3,000-horsepower natural gas generator, with startup emissions from the generator covered by the company’s air quality permit application.

The biomass boiler would burn enough biomass to produce roughly 2,300 metric tons per day of carbon dioxide, the amount needed to achieve targeted carbon dioxide removal credits.

Carbon credits are certificates that allow their owners to release a certain amount of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. One credit usually allows emission of one ton of carbon dioxide or the equivalent of other greenhouse gases.

MGS CNP 1 has proposed controlling emissions from the biomass boiler with methods including nitrogen oxide control technology and an amine absorber for carbon dioxide capture. Amines are organic derivatives of ammonia that often have a fishy odor.

Pollutants would be below the major-source threshold for Prevention of Significant Deterioration programs, according to the DEP’s engineering evaluation.

Minor sources are subject to less stringent regulations than major sources. The DEP’s Division of Air Quality has drawn fierce criticism from communities for which it has approved controversial permit applications through categorizing those applications as minor-source rather than major-source proposals.

Facility-wide emissions in tons per year would include:

• 90.9 tons, nitrogen oxides
• 75.7 tons, fine particulate matter
• 55.8, tons, volatile organic compounds
• 46.5, tons, carbon monoxide

Nitrogen oxides are air pollutants that can damage the human respiratory system and contribute to acid rain. Fine particulate matter can lodge deep in the lungs and bloodstream. Volatile organic compounds can contribute to ground-level ozone and may cause cancer.

Site planned for 2029 startup, handling fly ash 

The turn off to MGS CNP 1’s proposed biomass-fired facility would be approximately 3 miles north of Point Pleasant High School, according to a DEP engineering evaluation.

MGS CNP 1 intends to begin construction of the facility in 2026 with startup operations in 2029, according to the engineering evaluation. Major processes would include:

• Power generation
• Receiving, storing and handling raw materials such as wood chips and sand
• A post-combustion carbon capture unit
• Storage and handling of fly ash, a coal combustion byproduct, and bottom ash, coarser residue that can be collected from the bottom of furnaces that burn coal to produce steam

Fly ash and bottom ash may contain toxic elements that harm humans and aquatic life.

Raw material used as fuel would be clean wood chips delivered to the site by trucks, according to the DEP’s engineering evaluation. Wood chips would be stored outdoor in piles until burned as fuel. Other materials trucked to the facility would include sand, ammonia and amine solutions. Substances trucked out of the facility would include fly ash, bottom ash and degraded amine.

The facility’s post-combustion carbon capture unit would be designed to remove more than 95% of carbon dioxide in combustion flue gas from a biomass boiler. The DEP said in the engineering evaluation the applicant wouldn’t be required to control carbon dioxide emissions because it would be a minor-source facility not triggering the federal emission standard to control carbon dioxide emissions.

A wastewater treatment plant onsite would receive water from a cooler and scrubber system. The DEP cited a conservative estimate that 10% of ammonia, sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid in the flue gas could be emitted from the wastewater treatment plant.

In a May letter, MGS CNP 1 told the DEP it didn’t have a complete monitoring plan because the plant design wasn’t complete, and that a modification would be filed to update requirements once the design was finalized.

Gas-fired, air-polluting facility planned near biomass site 

MGS H2 1’s air quality permit application for its planned hydrogen production plant lists nearby 1451 Airport Road, Point Pleasant, roughly 1 mile from the planned biomass-fueled facility, as its address. An air quality permit notice attached to the application document lists Nov. 15, 2028, as the planned operation startup date.

In February, Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced Fidelis and Akron, Ohio-based energy and environmental technology company Babcock & Wilcox had partnered in development of the latter’s planned BrightLoop facility at the Mountaineer GigaSystem site.

The BrightLoop facility will provide power to a planned 2,300-acre Monarch AI Data Center System, which is to consist of the Monarch Compute Campus in North Point Pleasant and an expansion campus, according to the Governor’s Office.

The hydrogen production plant proposed by MGS H2 1 would draw from autothermal reforming, which combines oxidation and steam conversion to produce syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide gases that is used as an energy industry feedstock, from hydrocarbons. Other processes would include:

• Carbon dioxide removal
• Steam production by waste heat recovery
• Electric and diesel-driven firewater pumps
• Cooling towers
• Storage tanks

Major emission sources at the site would include:

• One fired heater equipped with burners to make steam and electricity and technology to control emissions of nitrogen oxides, air pollutants that can damage the human respiratory system and contribute to acid rain
• Two combined-cycle gas turbines equipped with technology to control nitrogen oxide emissions
• Equipment leaks
• One auxiliary boiler
• One startup generator

Facility-wide emissions in tons per year would include:

• 56.7 tons, carbon monoxide
• 48.7 tons, nitrogen oxides
• 30.3 tons, volatile organic compounds
• 25.9 tons, fine particulate matter

DEP has advanced data center-linked project plans 

The DEP has advanced other air quality applications for data center-linked projects amid state leaders’ push to attract more data center development.

On Aug. 15, the DEP announced it approved an air quality application for an expected data center facility in Tucker County vehemently opposed by many community residents and leaders there over environmental health concerns.

On Aug. 18, the DEP held a public comment meeting on two nearly identical air quality permit proposals for planned data center facilities in Mingo County, drawing ire from environmental and community advocates over its preliminary determination to approve the permit requests.

House Bill 2014, which Morrisey hailed as the economic development centerpiece of the Legislature’s 2025 regular legislative session, is designed to ease in-state data center development in part by prohibiting counties and municipalities from enforcing or adopting regulations that limit creation, development or operation of any certified microgrid district or high-impact data center project.