ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The next step in another green energy project for the city of Liberal officially happened last week, with the City of Liberal and Apex officially signing an agreement with Apex Clean Energy for a water procurement option contract, an early step in the development of a green hydrogen facility, which could create significant opportunity for Kansas as a leader in the nascent sector.
Barrett Thomas, Apex development manager, said there is a lot of excitement about the agreement officially being signed.
“With this agreement being signed, we now have the ability to move forward because Step One was securing that water resource, and now, the next steps are to start securing wind resources and finding out where we can get those leases to power the electrolysis,” Thomas said. “Now, we're going to be working with our team to figure out what areas work between flight paths and bird migratory paths and all of those details so we can actually draw a circle on the map and define where everything will be. It's the same thing with the solar resources and battery storage and everything else, so our focus at the moment, now that that agreement's been signed, is figuring out where to put everything and finding out the Kansas regulations so we can make sure everything goes the way it's supposed to. We think Southwest Kansas is a great place with a lot of opportunity, so we'll be spending a lot of time in that area now. And at the moment, the wind and solar resources look really good, so we're excited to be doing a lot more work there in that area, and people will be seeing a lot more of Apex.”
Thomas then went into more detail about the project itself.
“As I presented to the Liberal City Commission at the meeting I was at, there’s the wind resource and there’s the solar resource, so we’ll take that energy from the wind, sun and batteries (since the wind’s not always blowing and the sun’s not always shining) to go into our electrolysis and green fuels production facility,” Thomas said. “From there, the water from the Wastewater Treatment Plant will meet up with the electricity. The electrolysis procedure is an electrical current going through, and it’s going to split the hydrogen and the oxygen. We’ll allow the oxygen to go while capturing the hydrogen and compress the hydrogen. There are a lot of different things we can do with the compressed hydrogen – it can be used as a fuel and in the heavy industries, it can be used for cement, aluminum and the steel business. There are cars that do currently run off of hydrogen – we’re not there quite yet, but maybe down the road we’ll be there on a large scale basis. Another avenue where hydrogen could be used is with ammonia production, which is used in fertilizer and in the shipping industry.”
However, Thomas emphasized, the project is still in the very early stages.
“Again, we have to figure out how we're going to get all of that energy to everything, and we still don't know where everything will be located, so there's still a lot of logistics to work out,” Thomas said. “And like I also said at that meeting, we know water is important. Kansas irrigated agriculture uses nearly 2.6 billion gallons per day, while Kansas thermoelectric power uses 816,000,000 gallons a day. The golf courses in Kansas use a little more than 8.8 million gallons per day, while the average 2,000-acre farm uses almost 2.7 million gallons per day. A 1-gigawatt electrolyzer facility, which is roughly what we’re looking at, uses a little more than 1.7 millions gallons per day. We do know those concerns about water are there, and that’s why one of Apex’s missions is sustainability, which is why we want to use the wastewater that would otherwise not be used. It’s an opportunity for Apex and the City of Liberal to use that resource, but every piece has to come together. For now, there won't really be a lot of work going on in Liberal since we're still in the developmental process and doing all the different studies and taking care of all of that work. We'll probably set up some sort of office space downtown, but it probably won't be manned 24/7, more like a couple days a week. We'll also start talking with landowners about leasing and all of that for the solar and wind, and there are also environmental studies and other studies to be done. During this time, the work will be more behind the scenes as we figure out all the more logistical details.”
Thomas added there were many factors that made Southwest Kansas a good potential spot for such a project.
“We started out looking just for water and we were wondering where would be a good place for that resource. One of our main values is sustainability, so we were looking for a sustainable water source, and that's what started everything – we've got some wind farms in Texas and Oklahoma, and there's a great wind resource there, but we realized we needed to start looking for water,” Thomas said. “So we backed up, and we saw how Liberal, with its population and everything else, and its Wastewater Treatment Plant might have enough sustainably sourced water to do what we need. That water is currently just going into the lagoons and being used for the ponds, but it's a resource we thought we could tap into. Once we discovered that water resource, and paired that with the wind resource, we knew Liberal would be a good spot.”
Shortly after that, Thomas said, was when Apex and City of Liberal leadership came together.
“It was only a couple months ago when the discussions got a little more serious. We'd done some initial meetings with them in order to see if there was any appetite for such a project, and we also had some studies to do, and we also visited the Wastewater Treatment Plant to take a look at those operations and confirm the quality of the water and everything else,” Thomas said. “Another aspect that made Liberal appealing to us was that new Wastewater Treatment Plant, because the effluent water that comes out is of good quality, which means less work for our end as far as cleaning and polishing it up, because there's still work to do to get the water to the electrolyzer, and there is still some cleaning we'll need to do, but the less we have to do on our end, the easier it is. Overall, this project is still VERY early in the process of getting everything put together. With all the leases and permits and everything else we have to sign and take care of, as well as the land and making sure all the logistics come together, it's a very complex process, and we're looking at seven to 10 years before everything is fully up and running.”
At the moment, Thomas said, the more immediate next steps are taking place.
“We're actually already working on the next steps of this project, and we're now doing what I call the desktop-type work. We're looking at the computers and maps and everything, and the team is looking at bird migration patterns and flight patterns and floodplains and everything else,” Thomas said. “When we officially make that circle on the map, we want it to be as accurate as possible so we know where everything will go. That's going on right now, and once we get that box drawn up, so to speak, we hope to within the next month or two start talking with landowners about leases and starting getting everything tied together.”
Overall, Thomas said, there is a lot of excitement about the project.
“We see it as a really tidy project that has a lot of potential to come together and do a lot of good. If we can get over all of the regulatory hurdles and figure all of that out, and if we can generate the power and use it for the hydrogen facility, it's going to be an amazing project. And we want to keep everything relatively close together because if everything's spread out, it's harder to keep track of everything,” Thomas said. “An immediate benefit will be the payment for the water, that's going to be more than $1 million a year that goes right into the city coffers, so there's a financial benefit that will be seen straightaway. There will also be several construction workers coming in to work on the project, and the taxes being paid. Once we start the wind farm, wherever those will ultimately end up being located, there will be those tax dollars that will be coming in as well and again, that's why we have to be so careful about figuring out all the regulations and all of that. Apex is really looking forward to this project, we think it has a lot of great potential and we're excited to be working with Liberal. We have a great relationship already with the Liberal City Commission and the mayor and city manager and other leadership, everyone's been very welcoming, which we appreciate. This is going to be a major commitment, and we intend to maintain the relationships we've gotten going so far.”
