To help stimulate the economy, both in Illinois and nationwide, U.S. Sen. Dick
Durbin will ask president-elect Barack Obama to fast track a number of
construction projects, including reviving the now-shelved 275-megawatt
FutureGen coal gasification plant planned for Mattoon.
Durbin, speaking at the Capitol recently, said an economic stimulus package,
which became a centerpiece of Obama’s presidential campaign down the stretch, would focus on infrastructure and jobs
– more specifically, he said, “projects that will be ready to go within 180 days so that we can use the 2009
construction season to try to put more life into our economy.”
Government leaders and industry captains from Cairo to Cicero are hoping Obama’s election yields a deluge of federal cashola for Illinois. Most will meet with
disappointment, but Durbin thinks the timing is perfect to move forward with
FutureGen, the public-private enterprise the U.S. Department of Energy scrapped
in January when the price tag for venture ballooned from $950 million to nearly
$2 billion.
“This a project that has long-term economic and energy positive impact for
Illinois,” said Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.
Indeed, FutureGen seems to be one of the few issues that brings together
Illinois elected officials on both sides of the political aisle.
In 2007, Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed the Clean Coal FutureGen for Illinois Act,
an incentive bill that had bipartisan support in the legislature. When the DOE
halted FutureGen in early 2008, citing cost overruns, all 19 Illinois
Democratic and Republican members of Congress called on President George W.
Bush to reconsider. Republican U.S. Rep Tim Johnson, whose district includes
Mattoon, called the DOE’s decision to pull out after sinking $30 million into the preliminary design
phase “misguided and misinformed.”
Owned and operated by the FutureGen Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based
consortium of energy companies, the plant would utilize near-zero emissions
technologies: integrated gasification combined cycle as well as carbon capture
and sequestration.
At this first of its kind facility, coal would be transformed into gases that
produce the steam needed to generate electricity. That gas also produces
hydrogen that can be used in fuel cells. The carbon dioxide is sequestered, or
stored, underground instead of being emitted into the atmosphere.
According to the DOE’s environmental impact statement on the plan, completed in November 2007, the
project would use 444 acres of land and require 3,000 gallons of water per
minute. Process water for the plant would be supplied by waste water treatment
plants in Mattoon and possibly nearby Charleston. An on-site reservoir could be
constructed to store up to 25 million gallons of cooling water, the report
indicates.
Meanwhile, CO2 storage would be located 1.3 to 1.6 miles underground; a second
sequestration site is also proposed at a depth of .9 miles beneath the surface.
The suggested reservoirs, located 200 miles from the New Madrid fault, have
been used in the past for storing natural gas.
If Obama green lights FutureGen, either as part of a stimulus program or in his
first federal budget, the project should move swiftly to completion.
Environmental advocacy organization the Sierra Club, which typically tries to
block construction of new coal-fired power plants, won’t stand in FutureGen’s way, says James Gignac, Midwest director of the Sierra Club National Coal
Campaign in Chicago.
Gignac says the Sierra Club — which in 2006 threatened to hold up Springfield’s 200-megawatt reactor unless certain environmental protections were put in
place — would not take legal action to prevent FutureGen from proceeding with
construction if its air permits include limits on CO2 emissions.
To build the plant, the FutureGen Alliance would need to obtain from the
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency permits for underground injection
control, air construction and air operating, water, and others, says IEPA
spokeswoman Maggie Carson. Representatives from the Alliance have met with the
IEPA, but the agency has not received a UIC permit, Carson says.
The Sierra Club isn’t stepping aside because the project is a boon to Illinois’ economy, however. Gignac believes FutureGen should determine once and for all
whether burning coal without accelerating global warming is technologically and
financially feasible.
“If sequestration is going to be a part of our future, we need to make that
decision quickly,” Gignac says.
Contact R.L. Nave at rnave@illinoistimes.com
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2008.
