Clean coal, 2/6/08

(Please forgive the length of this post).

Remember FutureGen, the experimental coal-fired power plant that was supposed to lead the way toward nonpolluting electrical generation?

Future Gen was dealt a hard blow by the U.S. Department of Energy last month. The DOE backed out of the project after complaining publicly since late December about the project’s rising costs — to $1.8 billion from $800 million when it was announced in 2003.

Rather than build one large experimental plant, the DOE now leans toward a series of smaller ones.

That’s much different from five years ago. When FutureGen was announced, states bid against each other to be the chosen site. The prototype plant was to establish the technical and economic feasibility of producing electricity and hydrogen from coal while capturing carbon dioxide generated in the process and storing it underground.

The plant could have had as many as 1,300 people employed during construction and 150 permanent jobs once it went into operation. That does not count the unknown benefits from having so many scientists and engineers involved in its construction and operation.
Ohio offered incentives totaling $164 million. West Virginia stayed out of the game. Gov. Joe Manchin said West Virginia didn’t have the money to compete. All it offered was 387 acres near Point Pleasant, W.Va. That came nowhere near what other states were offering.

Eventually, Illinois was chosen as the site.

The FutureGen Alliance, the power and coal companies developing the plant, had planned to pay for 26 percent of the project, with the DOE providing the rest. American Electric Power is a member of the Alliance.

DOE is soliciting new inquiries from private industry for what it says could be a series of clean-coal projects.

According to The Associated Press, U.S. Sen Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Rep. Tim Johnson, R-Ill., on Tuesday accused Undersecretary of Energy C.H. “Bud” Albright of saying the DOE was not interested in “building Disneyland in some swamp in Illinois” during a conference call with FutureGen Alliance members and others involved in the project.

Albright later apologized.

“I regret the comment I made,” Albright said. “It does not reflect my view then or now, nor does it reflect the view of the department or Secretary Bodman.”

But the damage to FutureGen may have been done. The AP quoted Mike Mudd, chief executive officer of the FutureGen Alliance, as saying construction is “very, very unlikely” without the DOE.

An article in The Times-West Virginian of Fairmont, W.Va., quoted Manchin as giving a reason other than cost for the DOE’s withdrawing from the Illinois site.

“The federal government stepped out of FutureGen because the technology market has moves past” the technology the plant was going to use, Manchin said at an event in Fairmont.

“You’re going to hear something very soon about something that we’re doing and working with” on coal liquefaction, also in partnership with major utilities, Manchin said.

So where do we stand on clean-coal technology? Maybe we’ll learn in a few months. FutureGen just might be regrouping. Meanwhile, American Electric Power is waiting for permission to increase rates before it resumes planning work on one or more new plants using a clean-coal process known as IGCC.

No matter what you do, burning coal cleanly is a more expensive than burning it dirty. If people want electricity from coal and a cleaner environment in the process, they will have to decide how much it’s worth to them.

And some folks will continue to say there is no such thing as clean-coal technology. They will cite the fact that mining coal is a dirty business, so no matter how cleanly coal is burned, the environmental damage remains.

As part of that, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition issued a news release on Wednesday with news on that front.

West Virginia State Senator Jon Blair Hunter, D-Monongalia, today introduced a bill that that would “effectively end the practice of burying thousand of miles of streams under the rubble created by mountaintop removal coal mining,” the OVEC news release said.

“I introduced Senate Bill 588 because I fervently believe that God did not intend for us to destroy the mountains, the streams, the forests and His people in order to mine coal,” Sen. Hunter said.

So that’s where we stand now, trying to clean coal on both ends of the cycle — mining and combustion.