A Huge New Coal Plant -- Your Tax Dollars at Work

Mattoon, Illinois, has just become the single most important spot on the globe for Big Coal. There a consortium of mining companies and electric utility companies are putting American tax dollars to work. Building a commercial coal-burning plant that is to have the latest in clean tech. To remain almost carbon neutral the FutureGen plant will use carbon dioxide sequestration. They're going to pump some of that CO2 underground and try to keep it there.

Current cost estimates? The plant should cost upwards of $1.5 billion. However, three-fourths of that money is coming from federal subsidies and some Congresspersons are beginning to question the cost and scope. The DOE itself is calling for a cost "reassessment." Yet so strong is the attraction of coal-burning to politicians from coal-producing states that is not likely the plans will be dumped at this point. And if this plant works Big Coal sees it as proof they can out-do nuclear energy as the good guys in the move to lower greenhouse gas emissions and perhaps reduce global warming. So remember, even though you're picking up most of the tab, Big Coal wants to be your friend.

The stated goal is to have the plant running by 2012. If this prototype's a technical and commercial success, the idea is for the utilities to borrow the cleaner coal-burning technology and spread it around the world.

If you want a look inside the science and engineering proposed for this plant, here's an analysis from Scientific American.

Here's how they describe the plans to pump the CO2 underground for permanent storage:
"Some of the power generated would be used to compress the CO2 and pump it deep underground to be permanently stored in saline aquifers. 'It will never come out,' says geologist Susan Hovorka of the University of Texas at Austin, who has been conducting carbon sequestration feasibility experiments. 'It's moving through the tiny pores between the sand grains and it gets smeared, like grease on a tie'."

Hovorka's initial experiments at an oil field northeast of Houston have shown that the CO2 behaves as expected, remaining trapped in the geologic formation. But it does have impacts, such as leaching out minerals in the rocks and corroding well equipment. 'If you put undiluted weak acid into your plumbing, it will eat holes in it," Hovorka notes. "We observed that and it's not unexpected."

Involved in the FutureGen Alliance along with the U.S. Department of Energy are some of the globe's biggest mining and utility companies. E.On of Germany is a major electricity generator. BHPBilliton and Xstrata of Australia. Then there's China's largest coal-burning utility, the China Huaneng Group. Some familiar American corporate names are on the roster as well: Peabody, Rio Tinto US, American Electric Power. On behalf of the FutureGen Alliance, taxpayers of America, a big kiss and a handshake all around. You keep the lights burning and FutureGen will get to burning the coal.

Mattoon, Illinois currently has under 20,000 residents. Previously the small city in southeastern Illinois may have been best known, if it was known at all, for its Soybean Museum.

Comments

[joebhed]

Whether the Mattoon plant and Future Gen technologies become the technical fix for CO2 atennuation, or not, this effort ought to be eminently supported by environmentalists everywhere.
On behalf of all future generations, it is up to we, the present inhabitants, to solve the problem of getting the planet back into a carbon "balance".
The choices are nuclear and coal.
That by no means leaves out ALL of the renewable energy we can bring to market, and, of course, commercial-scale wind energy is economically feasible right.
Nuclear is making a strong comeback effort.
Whether it will be successful, nobody knows.
Federal subsidies for nuclear are more enormous than those for clean coal technologies.
Most analysts predict that without local objections, nuclear plants could be online by 2016 or so.
Where will we store the waste from these nuclear plants?
How can we prevent a new nuclear phase from leading to global weapons proliferation in the terrorist-enhanced political environment.
I feel that as soon as we solve THESE two problems, it will be appropriate for a nuclear energy resurgence.
Without them, it is just as immoral, if not more so, as continuing burning coal and exacerbating our carbon imbalances.
So, today, we see a major undertaking on carbon management. We should put as many of our tax dollars as it takes to solve the problem at THIS stage, rather than after the carbon is already in the atmosphere.
Whatever it takes! Period!
From this day on, NO coal plant should be permitted anywhere in this country that does not include a commitment to retool to carbon capture as soon as any technology is readily available, and no matter from where that technology is borrowed.
Once this hurdle is overcome, we can continue with coal being the primary source of the nation's future power supplies, including, yes, to fire up all of those hybrid and electric vehicles that may eventually come into being.
Yes. folks, we do have a choice.
Will that be coal or nuclear?
If we do not make a choice, we will have both.

[realitytrumpsbull]

Watch, they'll end up doing something stupid,
and the arabs will end up owning it, and we'll
have to pay them a fee to dig our own coal...
curb your politician­....

[Robert59]

What prevents us from running all electric cars and creating a power grid to sustain it? Not enough electrical power. If this coal plant proves to remedy many of coal's ills (and everything we humans do has an impact) then it could provide us the means to expand our electrical grid and lay the foundation for electric transportation.

[Robert59]

Harry,

I'll admit; you lost me. We sit on the world's largest deposits of coal and we have now come up with a technology that can make it clean.
And the government is helping to offset the costs which it does with so many things. Face it, government and industry are joined at the hip so that's not a shocker.

Our nation's chokepoint is refinery capacity. Oil companies don't want to build them because they aren't profitable and excess capacity would suppress prices, but if the government built several more just think of the leverage we consumers would have.

If this works it is great news. Much better to deal with underground C02 pollution than atmospheric C02 or a nuclear plant mishap.

Just think how good this will be in countries that are just industrializing. They can build coal power plants, provide power, and not harm the atmosphere but probably do minimal damage underground.

Now let's figure out how to derive hydrogen from all the coal and power our cars.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

Hey where do you think all the power for those supposedly 'green' electric cars going to come from? Photovoltaics and wind power won't be anywhere near ready by 2012.

[realityisbetter]

I live 45 miles North. Actually, Mattoon-Charleston is best known for being the meth capital of the USA! I guess there's nothing better to do there.

[jdm58]

Condolences to Mattoon. I confess that I celebrated the announcement that Mattoon had won the bid, as I live in Texas, which had bid two destinations for the plant, and which lost out to Mattoon. In Texas, the plan was to pump the CO2 under the oil fields, to force oil up into the pumps. Focus was still entirely on oil here, I'm afraid. Vast lands are available here for solar voltaic panels and wind turbines, yet the money is still on oil. Such a waste.