Feds push multiple-site plan

Now that plans for FutureGen at Mattoon have been abandoned, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman says multiple clean-coal power plants in various cities might be the answer.

Bodman said Wednesday in a conference call with the media that the department will investigate building several coal plants that have the same Futuregen technology of carbon capture and storage, and that could be built by 2015.

The Department of Energy will not fund its original plan, a clean-burning power plant that the FutureGen Alliance announced in December would be built in Mattoon.

The 180-degree turnaround shocked and angered Illinois congressional leaders, the governor and local officials in Mattoon as well as Tuscola, one of four cities that worked to get FutureGen.

Mattoon Mayor David Cline said he's not aware of the specifics of the department's restructured plans, but is disappointed by the news.

"We've done everything we can," Cline said. "This is all out of our hands.

"Our position is and will continue to be that we' ll be here and ready."

Mattoon Director of Public Works David Wortman said the city will work with the FutureGen Alliance and the Illinois delegation to make sure the original plant is built.

"As long as the alliance and the Illinois delegation is working on this, we will do everything locally that we can, and anything the alliance asks us to," Wortman said.

Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Sell said if Congress votes to continue with one FutureGen plant and President Bush signs that action into law, the Department of Energy can't stop it.

"Obviously, we're going to comply with the law, but we think this approach (with multiple plants) is better," Sell said. "The president is a firm supporter of this new approach. We're confident that we're going to make the case that it's better."

Sell said it's "outrageous" to think that the change came about because Mattoon was chosen rather than sites in Bush's home state of Texas.

The decision was based on the escalating price tag of the project, Sell said. The Department of Energy signed a cooperative agreement to pay for 74 percent of the project last spring, but Sell said the department told the FutureGen Alliance since then that it needed to be restructured.

Problems first came to his attention, he said, last March when he found the cost had increased from just under $1 billion to $1.8 billion.

"When I saw that baseline (cost) increase so dramatically, so early in the project," Sell said, "I knew we were in for something that would not end well."

The restructured project will ask for power companies' bids on proposed projects that use carbon capture and storage technologies. Sell said those would be accepted until March 3, with decisions about plants coming at the end of the year.

He encouraged the FutureGen Alliance, as well as the power companies that comprise it, to participate. He said he also encourages power plants to consider the four finalist sites for FutureGen because of the environmental studies done on them.

Mulitple projects will save taxpayer money because the government will provide funding for only the carbon-capturing technologies required, rather than the entire plants. The plants will sell power, rather than the former plan of making the FutureGen plant something of a "living laboratory," Sell said.

"We're confident that this is a much better way to proceed," he said.

Mayor Cline said Mattoon is willing to work with the Department of Energy as well as the FutureGen Alliance in trying to make sure a plant is built in Mattoon.

"We feel it's a worthwhile project," Cline said. "We're always willing to try to participate any way we can."

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