Dec 20 - Chicago Tribune


The coal industry thought it had found the answer that would allow coal-fired power plants to continue generating electricity while also lowering greenhouse gas emissions -- a process that captures carbon emissions and stores them underground.

Illinois is to be the testing ground for the promising but untested technology.

In 2007, Mattoon, Ill. was chosen over dozens of sites across the country as the future site for FutureGen, a $1.5 billion public-private partnership to build a first-of-its-kind coal-fueled, near-zero-emissions power plant. The U.S. Energy Department is to pay for most of the development costs of the plant.

Now state energy industry leaders say the plant may be too far behind in development to save coal.

The idea behind Mattoon is that the carbon dioxide emissions from coal could be stored permanently beneath the ground.

Although supportive of the technology, Midwest Generation, with six coal-fired power plants in Illinois, said it doesn't think carbon sequestration will be economically or technically feasible for more than a decade.

"The technology has been used for years in the oil and gas industry," said James Monk, president of the Illinois Energy Association, which represents the state's investor-owned electric and natural gas utilities in the public policy arena. "But it's never been used in the electric generation industry, and it's never been used at the kind of scale you'd have to use it at the electric generation facilities."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency believes carbon sequestration and capture will be in use by 2020 -- with the introduction of "bonus" subsidies for companies that use the technology. Without subsidies, the EPA estimates that the technology would not deploy until 2040. The agency acknowledges that the availability and cost of the technology remain uncertain.

The Energy Department halted construction at Mattoon, citing cost increases. Congressional auditors later found that the cost analysis that stopped the project had been faulty, inflating the cost estimate by $500 million. At the urging of state leaders, Energy Secretary Steven Chu restarted the project in March.

The Energy Department and the FutureGen alliance are working on a more detailed cost estimate and a preliminary site-specific design; they will decide to move forward or discontinue the project early in 2010, according to the Energy Department.

Coal gasification technology can cut carbon dioxide by 40 percent and, with the help of oxygen, can emit carbon dioxide as a concentrated gas stream, which, in the future, could be stored underground, according to the Energy Department. But the process does not eliminate greenhouse gases.

"Either by congressional action or U.S. EPA rule, in the next few years, there's going to be a decision made that will require the industry to do something about carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases," Monk said. "If you no longer are allowed to emit carbon into the air, and you don't have any alternative, the future is pretty grim (for coal)."

jwernau@tribune.com

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