Friday, November 20, 2009 East Central Illinois

Energy Department asks to rework deal with alliance

By Meg Thilmony
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 11:07 AM CDT

While Mattoon residents and Illinois lawmakers expressed elation at the announcement that the FutureGen plant has its sights set on Coles County, the U.S. Department of Energy wants to restructure its agreement with the Fu-tureGen Alliance.

Jack Slutz, the acting principal deputy assistant secretary for fossil energy, released a statement Tuesday calling for restructuring the current agreement between the federal government and the alliance, which is composed of power companies from all over the world.

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Slutz said that because clean coal technology is so important, the public deserves to get the best technology in the most cost-efficient way. Restructuring is the answer, he said, and more information will be forthcoming in the next month.

FutureGen Alliance spokesman Lawrence Pacheco called the statement "baffling."

"It's unclear exactly what they're talking about in their statement," Pacheco said. He said the FutureGen Alliance will honor its commitment to pay for 26 percent of the $1.5 billion coal plant, while an agreement signed last March indicates that the Department of Energy will pay for 74 percent.

"As eager to control costs as they are," Pacheco said, referring to the Department of Energy, "restructuring FutureGen would only add years of delay and more costs."

However, he said the alliance is happy to negotiate with the Department of Energy.

Slutz's statement comes a week after he sent a letter to the alliance's CEO, Michael Mudd, about the plan to announce the plant's future location, as it did, on Tuesday. Slutz told Mudd that the Department of Energy wished to wait longer to issue its final record of decision about the plant's location.

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