Energy Department scraps futuristic coal plant in Illinois

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Officials promised Wednesday to fight the Department of Energy's decision to scrap a futuristic, low-pollution power plant planned for central Illinois, but the leader of the state's congressional delegation seemed resigned to its end.

Sen. Dick Durbin said he hopes to fund the $1.8 billion FutureGen power plant through earmarks in the federal budget, but wasn't optimistic it would work.

"If the administration doesn't support it, we've seen that this president is willing to use his veto pen over and over again," Durbin said. "Without the support of the administration, it's an uphill struggle."

Durbin spoke not long after Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said publicly what he'd told members of Illinois' congressional delegation and Illinois economic development officials in a private meeting Tuesday.

'All-around better deal'

Rather than spend money on FutureGen, which was to have been built by a consortium of coal and power companies in Mattoon, Ill., using mainly federal funds, the DOE plans to put its finances into a handful of projects around the country that would demonstrate the capture and burial of carbon dioxide from commercial power plants.

"This restructuring ... is an all-around better deal for Americans," Bodman, an Illinois native, said in making the announcement to scuttle the program.

The department will now solicit industry applications for participation in the new projects. The idea is for the government to pay for building the carbon capture and storage facilities and industry to build the modern coal-burning power plant. Each project would be designed to capture 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas linked to global warming, officials said.

The coal and power companies planning to build the plant, known as the FutureGen Alliance, issued a statement saying it "remains committed to keeping FutureGen on track" but it was unclear how that would be possible without the federal funding.

FutureGen was envisioned as a unique research project that would trigger development of a virtually pollution-free coal plant where carbon dioxide emissions would be captured and buried deep beneath the earth. It would produce both electricity and hydrogen.

One of the authors of a 2007 MIT study on the future of coal said Wednesday that scrapping the existing project would delay efforts to make the country's abundant coal a cleaner source of energy by at least three years.

The study judged FutureGen to be a generally good approach to proving that carbon can be captured and stored.

"It's one thing making midterm correction and another thing gutting the thing and starting over again," chemistry professor Howard Herzog said. "I don't think it serves the national interests to set it back three years. This is something we needed yesterday."

The director of Illinois' Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity held out hope that Congress could reverse the DOE's decision. If that doesn't happen, he said, perhaps the project could be revived after President Bush leaves office next year.

"We have an administration that's lame duck," said Jack Lavin, who was at the Tuesday meeting with Bodman. "The next administration will be primarily dealing with this."

An economic development official in Mattoon said she hasn't given up either, noting that the FutureGen Alliance board plans a meeting in town next week.

Neither Lavin nor Angela Griffin, who led Mattoon's bid to win the FutureGen plant, would say whether they considered participating in the new projects announced Wednesday. But Griffin sounded doubtful.

"They misled every community that submitted a proposal for this project," said Griffin, president of Coles Together, the economic development agency in Coles County.

Mattoon was chosen in December over an eastern Illinois neighbor, Tuscola, and two sites in Texas.

Griffin estimated Mattoon and every other city that made a serious bid for FutureGen spent at least a quarter-million dollars in the process.

State officials in Texas have said they put $5 million into the pursuit of FutureGen.

Illinois spent just over $1.5 million, plus staff time, according to Ashley Cross, a spokeswoman for the state's Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

In his own letter Wednesday, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich reminded Bush of that investment.

"Mr. President, when you proposed FutureGen almost five years ago, you demonstrated how serious you were about finding a solution, not only to the problem of our country's dependence on foreign oil, but also to the serious challenges related to climate change," Blagojevich wrote. "States across the country took you at your word and put significant time and resources into competing for this project."

The Energy Department said it scrapped FutureGen because of concern about the project's cost escalation. When it was announced in 2003, the price tag was $800 million.

"We've had concerns about the state of the project for almost a year," Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said. "As early as April of last year, I personally met with the board of the FutureGen Alliance ... I told them directly, in unambiguous terms."

Durbin, a Democrat, said Illinois is losing FutureGen to politics, not cost, and a president from Texas.

"I tell you, there's no other reasonable explanation," he said.