Big Muddy rancher
Well-known member
Funny they are already doing it a Beulah, North Dakota.
The Bush administration said the projected cost had nearly doubled, to $1.8 billion from $950 million; the auditors said it had gone to $1.3 billion, up 39 percent.
U.S. pulls the plug on funding for FutureGen
By Monique Garcia and Joshua Boak
January 31, 2008
The Department of Energy on Wednesday officially quashed a $1.8 billionclean-coal project slated for central Illinois, leaving the experimentalventure to capture carbon emissions dependent on Congress for survival.
The FutureGen Industrial Alliance was cooperating with the EnergyDepartment to develop a coal-fired power plant designed to gasify and storecarbon emissions deep within the Earth, a process known as sequestration. Butthe Energy Department withdrew its support because of ballooning costestimates on what was initially supposed to be a $1 billion project.
The surprise move transformed a short-lived celebration after Mattoon,Ill., was selected last month as the plant’s home into a legislative battle,once the Bush administration chose instead to spread funding across multiple facilities planned nationwide.
FutureGen Chief Executive Mike Mudd remains confident the Illinois plantwill be constructed, saying the Department of Energy’s decision is not anautomatic death knell for a project with the full backing of the state’scongressional delegation.
“Congress writes the laws, Congress authorizes the money,” Mudd said. “At the end of the day, if Congress wants FutureGen to happen, FutureGen willhappen.”
During a conference call Wednesday, Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Sellsaid circumstances have changed since the program’s conception in 2003, notingthere are 33 applications to build similar coal power plants. Under the newplan, the Energy Department would fund the capture and storage of carbonemissions, while utilities cover the cost of power generation. The Departmentof Energy estimated the new plants would join the grid starting in 2015.
Sell portrayed the announcement as a merciful decision for Mattoon, a townof 17,000 south of Chicago along Interstate 57.
“Now, had I just wanted to wash my hands of this, I would have let it goand the folks of Mattoon, Ill., could have continued to celebrate this for ayear or maybe two years, and then when the same [plan] went south, I couldhave blamed it on the next administration for failing to bring this great ideato fruition,” Sell said.
Sell’s statement offended Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who suggested the decision was motivated by Illinois besting President Bush’s home state of Texas for the sequestration plant.
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Maybe [U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman] ought to come down to Mattoonand sit on Main Street and meet the people who’ve been working for years,literally for years, to win this project and tell them that he did them afavor,” Durbin said. “I think he might be shocked by the response.”
Department of Energy officials in April expressed reservations about risingcosts, leading to a series of meetings with FutureGen executives that failedto produce a meaningful conclusion. Mudd said his organization does notunderstand the rationale behind the Energy Department’s announcement, notingthat its decision squanders four years spent reviewing the science andregulatory framework in a historically unprecedented effort.
The plan preferred by the Energy Department would likely undermineFutureGen, a non-profit with about $400 million in private funding from 13energy companies. “It’s difficult to have serious talks with these companieswhen we have to go, ‘Oh, by the way we’re not sure whether the government isgoing to support this anymore,’” Mudd said.
Clean coal technology" describes a new generation of energy processes that sharply reduce air emissions and other pollutants from coal-burning power plants.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the U.S. Department of Energy conducted a joint program with industry and State agencies to demonstrate the best of these new technologies at scales large enough for companies to make commercial decisions. More than 20 of the technologies tested in the original program achieved commercial success.
The early program, however, was focused on the environmental challenges of the time - primarily concerns over the impact of acid rain on forests and watersheds. In the 21st century, additional environmental concerns have emerged - the potential health impacts of trace emissions of mercury, the effects of microscopic particles on people with respiratory problems, and the potential global climate-altering impact of greenhouse gases.
With coal likely to remain one of the nation's lowest-cost electric power sources for the foreseeable future, the United States has pledged a new commitment to even more advanced clean coal technologies.
Building on the successes of the original program, the new clean coal initiative encompasses a broad spectrum of research and large-scale projects that target today's most pressing environmental challenges.
The Clean Coal Power Initiative is providing government co-financing for new coal technologies that can help utilities cut sulfur, nitrogen and mercury pollutants from power plants. Also, some of the early projects are showing ways to reduce greenhouse emissions by boosting the efficiency by which coal plants convert coal to electricity or other energy forms.
In January of 2003, eight projects were selected under the first round CCPI solicitation, of which two were withdrawn. Of the remaining six projects supported by the first round of the CCPI, two projects are currently in the operational phase, one was discontinued before award, two were discontinued during project development, and one has been completed.
In October of 2004, four projects were selected from the second round CCPI solicitation. One project has since been withdrawn. Of the remaining three projects, one is in the operational phase, and the other two are under development. The two projects under development will demonstrate advanced IGCC technology, while the project in operation is demonstrating a neural-network control process for advanced multi-pollutant controls by means of plant optimization.
A third round CCPI solicitation is underway and is focused on developing projects that utilize carbon sequestration technologies and/or beneficial reuse of carbon dioxide.
Funding Opportunity Announcement
DOE released a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) on August 11, 2008. The FOA requested proposals be returned to DOE by January 15, 2009. These proposals are currently under review.