FutureGen is dead.  Have the environmental extremists scored big?  Only time will tell.

It all started in 2003 with a great plan with super coal powers such as Foundation Coal, Peabody Coal and others pitching in to form the FutureGen Alliance.  For almost five years, the grueling task of selecting a site and gathering support rolled on with seemingly unstoppable force.  The big thing was going to happen, a big positive for the coal industry as well as its detractors.  After all, we’re talking clean coal at its very best.

When Mattoon, Illinois was selected as the site, the whole project was snuffed out as nonchalantly as a negative hand gesture.  Were there political ramifications?  Who knows? It seemed strange that the project was snuffed out at the very moment when it had finally reached fruition.  Putting the kibosh on a plan that would have launched a new era in coal technology and a level of clean coal heretofore unknown is a mystery.  Isn’t this what it’s all about?

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) complained that the cost for the 275-megawatt power plant had ballooned to $1.8 billion, from a $950,000 million price tag in 2003, which represented 74 percent of the total cost. DOE’s share, however, had only risen to $1.1 billion.  In this day and age of billion-dollar spending, that seems slight.

Energy analysts say that technology development and changing priorities since the FutureGen inception has made the project obsolete.  They contend that DOE’s plans to finance carbon-capture equipment at commercial power plants could actually accelerate the implementation of the clean-coal vision that once was FutureGen.  Commercial plants are based on existing equipment that is considerably cheaper to build than FutureGen.  American Electric Power, for instance, estimates that its’ 629-megawatt IGCC plants it plans to build in Ohio and West Virginia would cost about $2.5 billion each, which includes carbon capture, and is about 27 percent cheaper per megawatt of power produced than projected costs for FutureGen.

The FutureGen Alliance says not so fast, my friend. The Alliance claims that the government is exaggerating.  DOE claimed that it became cost-prohibitive, but the Alliance points out that DOE’s share had only risen to $1.1 billion and that the Alliance members had agreed to provide partial or full repayment for overruns.  So that takes care of that.  Right?  Wrong.  DOE also says that the new project would sequester as much carbon dioxide at a lower cost than FutureGen.  It was once again pointed out that the Mattoon site would sequester approximately 2 million tons per year, as compared to the new projects which aim for 1 million tons a year. Half as much!

Well, there are some of the arguments, pro and con.  This debate could go on forever.  It’s disheartening that five years of planning has gone by the wayside like so much rubble.

Is it a red letter day for environmental extremists?  Maybe so.  But they’ll never win the war!

Comments?  E-mail alskinner@ntelos.net   Let us know what you think.