Waste-to-energy plant planned for Ohkay Owingeh land

Waste not, want not.

Mozart DevCo, a north Texas energy company, is planning to build a 10-megawatt waste-to-energy plant on Ohkay Owingeh land, in partnership with the pueblo and the North Central Solid Waste Authority. The site for the plant, north of Española off of U.S. 285 near the old Duke City Lumber yard, is close to the Alcalde Transfer Station.

The plant, which will take up 15 acres or less, is expected to process between 200 and 300 tons of waste per day, diverted from the regional landfill, and support 30 full-time jobs.

The plant will superheat solid waste, including tires, plastic and food waste, to around 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, gasifying it into syngas — a process which CEO Mark Rutledge and Chief Development Officer Michael Dwinnell said would reduce the amount of waste heading to the landfill by 80% to 90%, saving local municipalities waste hauling and transfer costs.

The syngas will then be converted into electricity; Rutledge said the company is currently discussing power purchase agreements with several entities.

It’s not the same as a plastic spoon smoldering on the stove, Dwinnell said, but rather a thermochemical conversion process.

“It’s a horse of a different color,” Dwinnell said.

Byproducts include ash — which would be transported to the landfill — and carbon, which would be captured and sequestered and potentially turned into a product like liquid carbon dioxide or graphene. All of the carbon will be captured, Rutledge said, and emissions of oxygen and nitrogen will be determined in a feedstock study.

The engineering phase, which will start in the second quarter of 2026, is expected to take six to nine months. The construction phase is expected to take between 30 and 36 months and cost between $165 million and $210 million.

Mozart DevCo was founded in 2022. This will be the company’s first waste-to-energy project — and, Dwinnell believes, the state’s first waste-to-energy plant, although in 2022, the village of Los Lunas and PlastikGas established a small proof-of-concept plant to convert specifically plastic waste into various fuel types.

The company hopes to build a handful of similar plants throughout the state and set up a New Mexico headquarters.

Rutledge, whose background is in physics, worked in the semiconductor industry before cofounding Mozart DevCo with Dwinnell. He had a moment of realization when he saw waste collection agencies mixing recycling and standard waste.

“We take all this time and effort to separate our trash, and it all gets mixed together,” Rutledge said. “… There’s probably a better way to do this.”