German firm to revive FutureGen project

E.ON AG, Germany's biggest power utility, and partners plan to revive a project to build a coal-fired generator that doesn't emit greenhouse gases after the U.S. presidential elections.

The so-called FutureGen project will resume "after the change in government," E.ON Management Board Chairman Johannes Teyssen said today at the Financial Times/World Energy Council Energy Leaders Summit in London. E.ON is a member of FutureGen Industrial Alliance Inc., which was working with the U.S. Energy Department on a plant to capture and bury carbon dioxide.

The department said in January it was withdrawing support for the proposed $1.8 billion Illinois power station and would instead fund carbon-capturing projects at unspecified plants set to be operational by 2015. The U.S. has joined governments around the world in seeking to curb emissions blamed for climate change.

"We need to reduce our vulnerability to carbon dioxide," Teyssen said, adding that nuclear and renewable power production will join clean-coal generation as being the "big plays."