FutureGen could make a comeback

The fortunes of FutureGen, the $1.8 billion clean-coal demonstration plant canceled more than a year ago by the Bush administration, could be changing—if the project can shake off being labeled “the biggest earmark in history.” The Senate-passed $838-billion economic stimulus bill includes what appeared to be a thinly disguised earmark of $2 billion for the near-zero-emissions project. It was to have been built at a site in Mattoon, Illinois, but in January 2008 Samuel Bodman, then US Department of Energy secretary, pulled the plug (see Physics Today, September 2008, page 26 ). Shortly after inauguration day, a group of six Midwest senators, led by Illinois Democrats Richard Durbin and Roland Burris, wrote to DOE Secretary Steven Chu, urging him to restart FutureGen, which would demonstrate carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology on a commercial scale. Specifically, the lawmakers asked Chu to formalize the project’s environmental impact statement, which had okayed construction of the plant.

As Physics Today went to press, Chu hadn’t responded to the senators. But DOE press secretary Stephanie Mueller said Chu was reviewing FutureGen “along with a range of options to move [CCS] technology forward and help address the climate change crisis.” Chu, she said, “strongly believes” that CCS is needed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from US coal-fired plants. “But equally—if not more importantly—breakthroughs in this technology are essential for addressing the ever-greater threat posed by the greenhouse gas emissions from a growing number of coal-fired plants in China, India, and the developing world,” Mueller said.

FutureGen cropped up in an unflattering light during the contentious Senate debate on the economic stimulus bill. From the bill’s more than 700 pages, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) unearthed a two-line provision that designated $2 billion for “one or more near-zero emissions powerplant(s).” Coburn pronounced the provision the largest earmark ever.

But Coburn’s attempt to excise the FutureGen funding failed. At press time, it was uncertain whether the provision would survive the House–Senate conference committee. Both bills would allocate funds for other CCS demonstration projects.

FutureGen was to have teamed DOE with a consortium of 13 electric utilities. Bodman, who wasn’t at DOE when the project was proposed in 2003 with a price tag of $950 million, canceled the project because he believed it had grown too expensive. He redirected DOE’s 74% share of FutureGen funding into a new $1.3 billion cost-shared initiative to support up to three commercial-scale CCS demonstrations. No awards have yet been made.