U.S. to restart plans for a plant to capture greenhouse gases
WASHINGTON — Federal officials announced an agreement Friday to restart plans to build an experimental coal plant that seeks to collect greenhouse gas emissions before they enter the atmosphere.
If completed, the project would be the first commercial-scale effort in the country to test such technology.
The agreement will at least temporarily resurrect the so-called FutureGen project, which the Bush administration had discontinued in 2008, citing rising cost estimates. The plant, which would be built in Mattoon, Ill., is expected to cost more than $1.5 billion.
The deal is between the Energy Department and the FutureGen Alliance, a public-private consortium of coal users and producers.
In a move that Energy Secretary Steven Chu has hinted at for months, the Energy Department pledged Friday to spend about $1.1 billion to pursue the project, with nearly all the money coming from the economic stimulus bill that Congress passed this year. The FutureGen Alliance will raise and spend an estimated $400 million to $600 million on the project. Early next year, after completing cost estimates and fundraising activities, the alliance and the department will decide whether to proceed with the plant or to discontinue it.
Half the U.S. electricity supply comes from conventional coal-fired generating plants, which spew a stew of pollutants into the air. FutureGen would represent a radical departure.
Instead of burning coal, the plant would use a process called gasification to break the fuel into chemical components while releasing energy. Carbon dioxide would be separated from hydrogen and stored deep underground, according to FutureGen’s website.
Chu said the steps reflected the Obama administration’s commitment “to rapidly developing carbon capture and sequestration technology as part of a comprehensive plan to create jobs, develop clean energy and reduce climate change pollution.”
Environmentalists are split over the FutureGen concept. Some say coal is so inherently dirty that nothing should be done to encourage its use.
Henry Henderson, Midwest program director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said there was no way to make a pollution-free coal plant. But FutureGen could represent a vast improvement while demonstrating the economic viability of such processes, he acknowledged.
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