Mattoon picked for FutureGen pollution-free coal plant

ST. LOUIS (AP) - Decades after Texas outdueled Illinois for a multibillion-dollar science project that went nowhere, the Land of Lincoln got revenge Tuesday as the chosen home of a futuristic power plant developers hope will be virtually pollution-free.

The big question now: Will this experiment, again heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, do what the infamous super collider didn't - actually work?

FutureGen, as the plant has been dubbed, is a public-private venture years in the making aimed at designing and testing technology to turn coal into a gas that can be stripped of hydrogen, which then would be burned to produce electricity. Carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas created during the process, would be captured, then injected underground for ostensibly permanent storage.

The FutureGen Alliance, a consortium of 12 U.S. and foreign energy companies, chose Mattoon, Ill., as the site of the plant over nearby Tuscola and the Texas towns of Jewett and Penwell.

At Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, John Mead thinks FutureGen is a can't-miss.

"I think there's a pretty high confidence that these concepts can be turned into successful engineered processes," said Mead, chief of the school's Coal Research Center. "We're pushing technologies. But I think the understanding of science is there and we're gaining experiences every day in terms of making these processes work.

"I think the technology will be challenging, but I don't see that as a stumbling block."

But hours after Tuesday's announcement, the U.S. Department of Energy warned that cost overruns for the $1.8 million project - nearly twice the price tag almost five years ago - "require a reassessment of FutureGen's design." The DOE, and therefore taxpayers, are footing three-fourths of the plant's cost.

"DOE believes that the public interest mandates that FutureGen deliver the greatest possible technological benefits in the most cost-efficient manner, requiring a restructuring of FutureGen to "prevent further cost escalation," said James Slutz, the department's acting principal deputy assistant secretary for fossil energy.

In the 1980s, Texas outbid Illinois and other states to win the super collider, what was to have been a 54-mile underground ring of magnets that would smash protons together.

Though scientists once hoped that $11 billion project would help unlock the secrets of matter and energy. But it was just one-fifth complete when Congress pulled the plug on it in 1993 at a cost to taxpayers of $2 billion, ending a project many federal lawmakers viewed as little more than a bloated, over-budget science experiment the nation could ill afford.

Texas had pledged $1 billion to that effort, which promised a payoff of 4,500 construction and 2,500 permanent jobs.

In courting FutureGen, Texas had promised $260 million in cash and tax credits. Illinois offered a $17 million grant to help pay for various project costs, as well as an estimated $15 million in sales tax exemptions on materials and equipment through local enterprise zones. The state also has set aside $50 million for below-market rate loans to the FutureGen alliance.

Both states also passed laws indemnifying the alliance of any legal entanglements arising from the plant's carbon dioxide, if the gas ever seeped from underground.

Mead said the FutureGen plant has a realistic chance of working.

Various U.S. power plants have been turning coal to gas for years, breaking coal into smaller molecules that can be used to make power or chemical feedstocks.

"So rather than burning the coal, it breaks the coal apart," he said.

But the unique quest of FutureGen, he said, is developing a system that could burn the extracted hydrogen for electricity and safely, permanently stow the carbon dioxide in cavernous, below-ground reservoirs.

"We don't have a power plant that's set up to maximize the use of hydrogen. This one would," he said. "It's essential to get all the bugs out of it, demonstrate it works and generate confidence in the whole concept."

Developers have said the 275-megawatt plant could supply enough power for about 150,000 homes when it goes online perhaps by 2012.

Scott Segal, an attorney who heads the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a utility trade group, called the effort a worthy "proving ground for new technology."

"I think at the end of the day, government and industry have little choice (but) to test the technology," he said.

Before Tuesday's announcement, the Sierra Club's Bruce Nilles said the environmental group was confident developers adequately vetted the finalist sites for the project so long in the planning that he says its quaintly known in some circles as "NeverGen."

Still, he said he anticipated no legal challenges to the effort, "assuming it doesn't end up being on top of an endangered species or in a wetland or next to a school."

"We welcome an honest discussion about is it technically and financially feasibly for coal to be burned in a responsible manner," he said. "Obviously, this is being heralded as does coal have a future. And this is a very important research project."