A coal-fired power plant with zero emissions -- even of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming -- will be built near the east-central Illinois town of Mattoon, it was announced today -- in many ways, including this marquee in Mattoon, as pictured by the Journal Gazette and Times Courier of Charleston.The FutureGen Industrial Alliance Inc., a non-profit industrial consortium representing the coal and power industries, is supposed to build the plant over the next 10 years with support from the U.S. Department of Energy. However, a DOE official "said Tuesday that the federal government wants a reassessment of the FutureGen design due to escalating costs," reports Herb Meeker of the JG-TC. "DOE officials said last week that the FutureGen Alliance decided on its own to move ahead with its Tuesday announcement of Mattoon as the plant’s site, apparently before cost overrun issues were settled, according to one informed source. Meeker adds, "U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., believes renewed negotiations between DOE and FutureGen Alliance officials early next year can hammer out agreement on curtailing costs." (Read more)
The other finalists were sites near Tuscola, Ill., 25 miles north of Mattoon, and two in Texas: Odessa in the west and Jewett in the east. Robert J. Finley, director of the Energy and Earth Resources Center of the Illinois State Geological Survey, told Nathaniel West of the Charleston newspaper that the underground rock formations at the site were better suited to storing carbon dioxide than those in Texas, where the formations have been punctured by oil and gas drilling. Finley once worked for the Geological Survey of Texas, West notes. (Read more) (Encarta map) For DOE's Web site about the project, click here.
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