RSS
|
Mobile
|
Daily Emails
|
We Twitter
| Make us your home page
Jewett could be back in the running for a federally funded, virtually emissions-free coal plant.
The U.S. Department of Energy on Wednesday scrapped plans to build a $1.5 billion FutureGen coal plant in Mattoon, Ill.
Instead, Jewett and the three other sites originally considered for the facility could host multiple clean-coal plants.
"I've said all along that we have the best site," said Leon County Judge Byron Ryder. "If they are truly going to do what they say they're going to do, then I think we have a good shot at it."
Local leaders were disappointed in December when the FutureGen Alliance chose the Mattoon, Ill., site over Jewett's 400 acre location. The Texas Legislature had spent $5 million on its bids for Jewett and a West Texas site, and local and state leaders had negotiated a matching research grant between FutureGen and Texas A&M University.
Days after the alliance announced the site, the Department of Energy announced plans to restructure the FutureGen concept.
"We were not totally surprised," said Tom Wilkinson, executive director of the Brazos Valley Council of Governments and a leader in local efforts to recruit the plant. "It's kind of what we had expected, based on the reactions that were coming out of Washington."
Wilkinson said the region has had continuous discussions at the state level about a Texas project that would mirror some of the objectives set out by FutureGen. And the area has garnered support from three Texas lawmakers -- U.S. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn and state Rep. Joe Barton -- for federal funding of a FutureGen-like project, Wilkinson said.
The Department of Energy's plans to restructure FutureGen include spending $648 million on several projects around the country that would develop carbon capture and underground storage from coal power plants.
"This restructuring ... is an all-around better deal for Americans," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in announcing the decision to redirect the FutureGen program.
Bodman said the department would solicit industry applications for participation in the new projects. The idea is for the government to pay for the construction of the carbon-capture technology while the private sector builds the power plants.
The FutureGen program was envisioned as a project that would trigger development of a virtually pollution-free coal plant where carbon dioxide emissions would be captured and buried deep beneath the earth. It would produce both electricity and hydrogen.
First proposed nearly a decade ago with an estimated cost of just under $1 billion, its cost has soared to nearly double that figure. For years the project had trouble getting adequate funding, but in 2003, President Bush hailed it as a potential breakthrough in clean coal technology and said it was key to achieving wider use of hydrogen as a fuel.
The department acknowledged Wednesday its concern about the escalating cost of the project as originally planned.
"There was a consensus view that the price of this project will only increase," said Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell.
Sell said FutureGen was viewed as having little prospect of commercial viability. If industry pulled out of the program at some point "it would put taxpayers at risk," Sell said.
• The Associated Press contributed to this report.
• Holli Estridge's e-mail address is holli.estridge@theeagle.com.
