State regulators have approved a company’s application to build a gas-fired power plant aboard a vessel permanently moored in the Brownsville Ship Channel.

On July 14, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality approved an air permit for Karpower Valley, a shipyard at the Port of Brownsville on the southern tip of Texas. The company’s “Brownville Power Ship” would involve building 12 natural gas-fired engines on the ship that combined could generated up to 248 megawatts of electricity.

The floating power plant has the ability to emit more than 1 million tons per year of greenhouse gases, the equivalent of more than 221,000 cars and trucks driven for a year. It could also release nearly 754 tons per year of health-harming “criteria” air pollution.