The News-Gazette.com: Durbin questions Secretary of Energy about FutureGen

Durbin questions Secretary of Energy about FutureGen

By Meg Thilmony

Friday, May 9, 2008 11:41 AM CDT

Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman faced some tough questions Thursday during a Senate subcommittee meeting about FutureGen.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois interrogated him about the reasons the Energy Department restructured the clean-coal project. Durbin was a guest of the Energy and Water Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee.

The department maintains that the original plant's cost is too high, especially after it rose from $1.1 billion in 2005 to $1.8 billion by 2007. That's one reason it says it decided to help pay for several commercial plants rather than one large plant in Mattoon.

Durbin asked Bodman why the cost rose so much, pointing out that the department should have expected inflation.

"I don't have an answer to that," Bodman told him, adding that he thought the increase was more than just inflation. He conceded to Durbin's point that the project's size and goals did not change.

The Energy Department pledged to pay 74 percent of the original project, while a group of 13 international power companies, the FutureGen Alliance, were set to pay the rest.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., speaks at the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee hearing on the restructuring of FutureGen programs on Thursday. By The Associated Press

The alliance announced its intent to build the plant in Mattoon in December. By the end of January, the Energy Department announced the restructured plan.

Durbin attacked Bodman for saying it took courage to pull the plug on FutureGen.

"I would not describe it as courageous to ignore inflation any more than it's courageous to ignore gravity," Durbin said.

Earlier in the hearing, Bodman said he had made a "difficult decision to restructure FutureGen and I did it in order to save it from itself."

Bodman said building one large plant wasn't sustainable, "politically or economically."

Durbin said after all of central Illinois' hard work to land the plant, Mattoon is still eager for FutureGen to be built. It should be a politically sustainable project, he said.

While Bodman told the subcommittee that restructuring FutureGen was the way to go, FutureGen Alliance Chairman Paul Thompson testified that he believes the Energy Department should stick to its original plan.

"FutureGen at Mattoon offers the opportunity to advance many technologies faster and further than any other project in the world," Thompson said, adding that it would store 90 percent of the carbon dioxide produced.

The escalating price is due to inflation, Thompson said, especially for the price of the components needed to build the plant.

While the initial cost to the Energy Department is steep, Thompson said, the income generated from selling power would offset the plant's costs and pay for more research. If the plant is sold after research is completed, the Energy Department would be repaid "in part or in full for its investment," Thompson said. Alliance members would not be compensated, and won't gain any intellectual property from FutureGen.

Thompson said the separate technologies that convert coal into a gas and capture and store carbon need to be combined.

"It has to be put together into one operating plant," he said. "Everything has to work. It's integrated. ... That's why the big bang (of FutureGen) is so important. Smaller projects don't get us to the moon fast enough."

The subcommittee's chairman, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said he's not sure what will happen with FutureGen. The project may wait until a new administration takes over early next year.

The money for FutureGen will likely be set aside until decisions can be made, Dorgan said.