futuregen

Coal industry fires back at Dept. of Energy on FutureGen project

The coal industry isn't happy with the Department of Energy's cancellation of an ambitious clean coal project, and has issued a bulletin to correct what it considers inaccurate statements about the cost of the project.

Earlier this week, the DOE said it was pulling out of the FutureGen Alliance, a coalition of coal and oil companies banded together to create a coal-fired power plant in Mattoon, Ill., that injects carbon dioxide emissions underground. The cost, the DOE claimed, had become prohibitive. The budget for the 300-megawatt demonstration plant had ballooned to $1.8 billion because of price increases … Read more

DOE scraps FutureGen 'clean coal' project for new tack

The Department of Energy announced on Wednesday that it has pulled out of a carbon-capture technology project in favor of a restructured funding mechanism.

The DOE last year signed an agreement with the FutureGen Alliance, a coalition of coal and oil companies, to spend about $950 million on a demonstration coal-fired power plant that injects carbon dioxide emissions underground. Last December, a site for the FutureGen project in Matoon, Ill., was announced by the Alliance.

On Wednesday, the DOE said that it has scrapped that agreement and issued a new request for information, which will solicit proposals for demonstration plants … Read more

FutureGen Stalled?

FutureGen is the major US Department of Energy backed effort to pilot a technological solution to prove that carbon capture and sequestration from coal fired power plants is possible. At a slated price tag of $1.5 Billion ($1 Bil estimated originally, now estimated at $1.8 Billion), it is one heck of a science project - but one that sorely needs to be done.

Now that project appears to have hit a snag. While the site the consortium picked to build the project was selected in December as Mattoon, Illinois, after a short delay in responding, the DOE is … Read more

Reports: Energy agency to bail from FutureGen carbon capture project

The U.S. Department of Energy plans to pull its support of a $1.8 billion project to build a power plant that captures pollution underground, according to published reports.

The FutureGen project is meant to test cutting-edge carbon capture and storage technology, which is supposed to dramatically reduce emissions from fossil fuel-burning power plants.

Carbon capture and storage is considered an important technology to reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions, but the technology is unproven at a large scale. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year called for government funding of carbon capture projects in the United … Read more