From coal to clean

The Navajo Nation is spread across more than 27,000 square miles in the Four Corners region—the only place in the United States where the borders of four states (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah) converge. In the latter half of the 20th century, non-Navajo utility companies built seven coal-fired power plants in and around the Navajo Nation, which is roughly the size of West Virginia. Fueled by the region’s ample coal deposits, these plants helped provide power for the Southwest’s rapidly expanding population.

The plants brought lucrative job opportunities to the region. In 2012, employees at the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) earned an average of $35 per hour—more than twice the average wage for residents of Arizona’s Coconino County, where the plant was located. Employees of the nearby Kayenta Mine, which was on the Navajo Nation, averaged some $117,000 per year in pay, while the average annual income in the Navajo Nation hovered at around $36,000 per year.

“A lot of the Navajo Nation’s middle class really got started with work at the power plants and in the mines,” explains Arvin Trujillo, who until recently served as executive administrator and senior advisor to the president of the Navajo Nation.

In the past five years, however, many coal-fired power plants in the region have gone dark, and others are slated to shut down within the next decade. The closures are due largely to a nationwide shift toward cleaner and less expensive sources of energy, including natural gas and renewable sources. Decommissioning coal-fired power plants also helps move the nation toward a carbon dioxide-emission-free power sector, which the Biden administration aims to achieve by 2035.

In 2019, NGS and the Kayenta Mine closed. Nine months later, then-Navajo Nation president Jonathan Nez told the United States House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce that the closures had resulted in the loss of 1,000 jobs for Navajo workers and $40 million in annual revenue for the tribe’s government. “The NGS owners provided short notice, leaving the Navajo Nation little time to mitigate the large negative impacts,” Nez said.

Helping to mitigate these negative impacts is where Los Alamos National Laboratory comes in. In 2020, the federal government created the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization (IWG). The IWG has established 6 rapid response teams, each located in one of the IWG’s top-25 “priority communities”—communities that are facing, or will soon face, transitions away from fossil fuel-based economies. 

Each rapid response team (RRT) helps connect regional stakeholders with representatives from 11 federal agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, and Labor. Los Alamos leads the Four Corners RRT, which is helping navigate barriers that keep regional communities from accessing funds earmarked to support infrastructure projects, business development, workforce training, and more.

“There are some very well organized and very passionate environmental groups in northwest New Mexico, and they’re quite excited about the energy transition—about being able to look out their windows and see blue skies from the closure of these coal-burning power plants,” says Kevin John, a scientist at Los Alamos and director of the Four Corners RRT. “But I think you have to balance that with the challenges facing community leaders who are working through the real-time problems of economic diversification.”

“The Rapid Response Team has been a great liaison to the federal government, especially at higher levels of the federal government,” says Trujillo, adding that although the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (2021) and Inflation Reduction Act (2022) made billions of dollars available to support communities transitioning away from fossil fuel economies, these funds aren’t always easy to access.

“Most of the dollars that are available are through grants,” Trujillo says. “And a lot of times, federal grant processes are quite complex and pretty time consuming.” 

The onerous process of applying for grants is further complicated by the fact that federal agencies sometimes struggle to understand the unique challenges facing communities in the Four Corners. John recalls a moment at the Four Corners Energy & Water Innovation Student Symposium, which the RRT helped organize in 2023, bringing together federal agency representatives, tribal leadership, national laboratory researchers, and students from regional colleges and universities.

“Somebody asked the question, ‘How many of you have to haul water in order to get your daily and weekly water supply?’” John says. “And the number of hands that went up in the room was stunning. I think that sometimes, people who come to the region don’t appreciate how different the Four Corners are from coal communities they might be more familiar with—in Appalachia, for example.”

Why Los Alamos?

The Four Corners RRT is the only RRT led by a U.S. national laboratory. Federal agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, lead the other five teams.

Why is Los Alamos, which is perhaps best known for its nuclear weapons work, directing an initiative like the Four Corners RRT? The answer has to do with the Laboratory’s long history of energy research, which includes nuclear, fusion, geothermal, hydrogen, and more. Over the years, the Laboratory’s energy research has expanded into biofuels, direct air capture (which involves removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere), and carbon capture and storage (CCS) (which involves capturing carbon dioxide emitted from industrial sources). 

CCS encompasses a range of technologies, but one application involves capturing the carbon dioxide emitted from a coal-fired power plant’s smokestack. This carbon dioxide can then be transported through a pipeline or truck, used in fossil fuel production or industrial processes, or stored in underground salt caverns or depleted oil wells.

In 2017, PNM Resources, which operated the San Juan Generating Station, announced that it intended to close the plant in 2022. The City of Farmington then set out to acquire the plant, intending to install CCS technologies there, with the goal of keeping the generating station in service longer.

Los Alamos reviewed a prefeasibility study of the CCS retrofit and suggested that the project was practical. Although complications ultimately led to the San Juan Generating Station’s closure, the Laboratory’s assessment of the plant helped create relationships with stakeholders in the Four Corners region. Those relationships in turn led researchers at Los Alamos to think in new ways about how the Laboratory’s work could benefit communities in the Four Corners and beyond, setting the stage for the Laboratory-led Intermountain West Energy Sustainability and Transitions (I-WEST) initiative.

I-WEST brought together universities, national laboratories, private companies, and other groups to develop a roadmap for achieving net zero carbon dioxide emissions in a six-state region called the Intermountain West (comprising Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming).

Key to I-WEST was a “place-based approach” to evaluating the implementation of energy technologies—including hydrogen, carbon capture, biofuels, wind and solar, and more. In addition to evaluating technological pathways to carbon neutrality, I-WEST also explored the economic, workforce, policy, and energy justice implications of implementing diverse energy technologies in the region, culminating in a report that was released in 2022.

Andrea Maestas, a program manager in the Laboratory’s Applied Energy Program Office, says that the Laboratory’s leadership of I-WEST helped make Los Alamos the right choice to head the Four Corners RRT. “Leading these regional initiatives has been a stretch for Los Alamos,” Maestas says. “Even though we had a history doing research in the Permian Basin, it’s very different to do community-engaged research and advocacy for a region. This has been a huge and impressive shift for a lot of our technical staff members.”

Green opportunities 

Although the energy transition poses challenges for the Navajo Nation, Trujillo says that the transition brings opportunities, too. The Navajo Nation’s ample sunshine and wind can be harnessed to produce electricity, which, along with regional stores of natural gas, could be used to make hydrogen. The Four Corners region has many underground salt beds and depleted oil reservoirs, which might be used to store carbon dioxide captured from power plants or other sources.

Trujillo says that the Navajo Nation is interested in exploring a range of energy technologies to help bolster the tribe’s economy. Among other projects, Navajo leaders hope to see CCS technology, of the kind once planned for the San Juan Generating Station, implemented at nearby Four Corners Generating Station.

Four Corners Generating Station is a coal-fired power plant on Navajo land about 12 miles south of the former San Juan Generating Station. Although the Four Corners plant is slated to close in 2031, Trujillo says that if CCS technology were implemented there, it might be possible to keep the generating station running longer. “It will be difficult to get anyone to invest in a power plant that can’t reduce emissions,” he says.

Trujillo says that the Navajo Nation is also exploring opportunities to use the region’s ample solar resources for power and hydrogen production. In tandem with these projects, Navajo leaders are interested in developing pumped storage hydroelectric power, which would allow utility providers to store energy from renewable sources for use at times when renewable energy isn’t available (when the sun stops shining or the wind isn’t blowing).

“We’re hoping that these developments will help us attract new manufacturing and new industrial companies to the region,” Trujillo says. “We hope that companies will look at the fact that we’re using renewable or non-carbon-based energy to supply their industries.”

Regionally relevant research

Entrepreneurs and stakeholders in the Navajo Nation are seeking federal funds to kickstart energy-related projects. To make federal grants and programs more accessible to these stakeholders and others in the Four Corners, the Four Corners RRT helped organize events in New Mexico and Arizona where representatives of federal agencies met with entrepreneurs and community leaders interested in garnering federal support for a breadth of economic, workforce, and community-development projects.

“At first, we were really trying to understand what the 11 different federal agencies that are involved with the IWG could bring to communities,” John says. “I think that one role that Rapid Response is playing now is matchmaking communities with the right agency resources.”

Maestas says that the Laboratory’s involvement in the Four Corners’ energy economy goes beyond acting as a facilitator between federal agencies and local communities. “Even when we have our Rapid Response hat on, we’re still Los Alamos,” Maestas says. “Our technical expertise means we have the opportunity to provide technical assistance to regional stakeholders.”

Bailian Chen, a scientist at Los Alamos who is an expert in CCS and hydrogen, is one researcher whose work has the potential to support the Four Corners’ energy transition. Chen and other researchers, in collaboration with several regional consortiums, are working to better characterize carbon dioxide sources (including power plants) in the Four Corners, and to research other aspects of carbon capture technology, transportation, utilization, and storage.

“There are plenty of carbon dioxide storage formations underground in the San Juan Basin,” Chen says. “But transportation is a challenge.”

That’s because transporting carbon dioxide at scale requires building pipelines that cross land belonging to a breadth of public and private owners. Pipelines can also leak, releasing the captured carbon dioxide.

One of Chen’s recent projects includes working to expand an open-source software platform called SimCCS, which was developed at Los Alamos. SimCCS incorporates data on carbon dioxide capture locations, storage sites, and geographic information such as topography, land ownership, and population density. The software allows users to holistically consider the different aspects of CCS deployment in a region.

Originally, SimCCS was developed to optimize cost: Using the platform, a user could determine the least expensive way to build CCS infrastructure. Chen and other researchers have modified SimCCS to allow users to optimize for other goals, such as minimizing the environmental or social impacts of pipelines and other CCS infrastructure.

Researchers at Los Alamos have also collaborated with universities and other national laboratories to develop technologies that support CCS risk assessment, including by evaluating underground storage formations for potential leaks. They’ve also helped develop tools that can quantify the risk of induced seismicity—that is, earthquakes that might be caused by injecting carbon dioxide belowground.

“At Los Alamos, we have technology to support the deployment of all carbon-related projects in the Four Corners region,” Chen says. 

Hydrogen

Researchers at Los Alamos are also working to adapt CCS technologies to an energy technology that has the potential to become an important alternative to fossil fuels: hydrogen.

In some contexts, hydrogen can serve as a lower-emission alternative to natural gas. Used inside a fuel cell—a device that converts chemical energy into electricity—hydrogen can also power motors inside semitrucks, passenger cars, or other vehicles, yielding only heat and water vapor as byproducts.

Throughout the Four Corners region, stakeholders are interested in hydrogen as an alternative energy technology. Some regional groups are advocating for the expansion of hydrogen production and use in the region, and businesses such as Navajo Agriculture Products Industry, which intends to use hydrogen to power its farming equipment, hope to lead the way.

Researchers at Los Alamos are developing a tool called Optimization, Evaluation, and Risk-Assessment Techniques for Hydrogen Energy (OPERATE-H2) that is based on SimCCS. This tool will allow users to evaluate geologic reservoirs, such as salt beds and depleted oil wells, for potential hydrogen storage, and to consider the different aspects of an economy of hydrogen production, transportation, and storage, in much the same way that SimCCS does for carbon dioxide.

Los Alamos scientist Prashant Sharan is a part of the team developing OPERATE-H2. He is also working on a project that involves using something called “produced water” to make hydrogen.

Produced water, a byproduct of crude oil production, is a mix of groundwater and water that has been pumped belowground to help force oil and gas out of the earth. “New Mexico is a water-stressed region, and much of the water that is available is brackish,” Sharan says. “But the region does have massive produced-water resources.”

Produced water contains salts and other substances that reduce its purity. Sharan’s team has found that by using a process called supercritical water desalination and oxidation, it is possible to make produced water clean enough to use in hydrogen production, and to do so efficiently and economically—an innovation that might help conserve regional water resources and bring down the cost of hydrogen production.

“The work we’re doing at Los Alamos can play a major role in helping increase industry’s confidence in these technologies,” Sharan says.

John emphasizes that although Los Alamos stands to bring its technical know-how to bear in the Four Corners region, the Laboratory’s role isn’t to dictate policy or promote one energy technology or another. Instead, the Laboratory can serve as a “trusted information broker” in the Four Corners region.

“We are technologically agnostic,” John says. “We don’t have skin in the game in terms of if the region picks one technology over another. We’ll simply be a resource to help a community understand, for example, how much water one technology consumes relative to another. But we aren’t advocating for one thing over another at all.”

A culture shift

The Four Corners RRT has contributed to a larger culture shift for the Laboratory’s staff. Maestas says that increasingly, researchers at Los Alamos are thinking about the ways in which the Laboratory’s energy work might affect local communities. 

This shift is consistent with the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) growing emphasis on community engagement. For example, project proposals submitted under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act require a “community benefits plan” that explores how the project might affect communities, and how the project might advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, among other considerations.

Maestas says that the Four Corners RRT has helped the Laboratory take those factors into account.

"Our researchers have adopted a frame of mind where they think about community impacts, societal readiness, and technology acceptance as part of their R&D projects," Maestas says. "This is how DOE thinks about projects, and we have been at the forefront of it with initiatives like the RRT."

Although the Four Corners RRT has expanded the Laboratory’s involvement with communities across New Mexico and beyond, for John, the Four Corners RRT’s mission hits close to home. John was raised in a coal-producing region in western Pennsylvania, where his father worked at a coal-fired power plant that closed in the 1990s. He says that it has been rewarding to advocate for the Four Corners as the region’s energy workers reckon with a transition like the one his father faced a quarter century ago.

“Seeing my father go through that, and having to redefine who he was—I think a lot of this journey has been somewhat personal for me,” John says. “The Rapid Response Team is something I’ve been really excited to be a part of.” ★