US Energy Department changes FutureGen plans in Illinois, won’t build new plant

US Energy Dept. alters FutureGen plans in Illinois

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The U.S. Department of Energy said Thursday that it has dropped its long-running plans to build a futuristic power plant in eastern Illinois and will instead use the site for the storage of carbon dioxide produced by another Illinois power plant.

The so-called FutureGen project originally was to include an experimental coal-fired power plant near Mattoon. Carbon dioxide from burning the coal would have been stored underground.

The department said Thursday that it will retrofit an existing plant in western Illinois that belongs to Ameren Corporation in Meredosia, Ill. Carbon from the plant will be piped to Mattoon for storage along a 175-mile pipeline it will build.

The entire project is expected to cost $1.1 billion, and construction is expected to begin in the spring. Its target completion date hasn’t been determined, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said during a conference call Thursday.

The Meredosia plant will test what is known as oxy-combustion — a process where pure oxygen, rather than air, is used to burn fuels such as coal.

The change in plans comes two-and-a-half years after Mattoon — about 45 miles south of Champaign — was chosen with much fanfare to be the home of FutureGen. The town watched as the project was scrapped entirely at one point by the Bush administration, then tentatively revived, provided it could be reworked to lower costs.

There was no immediate reaction from the Futuregen Alliance, a group of private companies that have been working with Department of Energy to build the FutureGen project. Durbin said they would be called on to contribute $275 million.

Durbin described the new version of the Futuregen project as a win for Illinois, and a way to keep the project alive. The initial plan was to test a power-production process known as Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle. Several other projects have ramped up to test that process, Durbin noted, leading the Energy Department to seek a new purpose for FutureGen.

“The heart of this is a research effort,” Durbin said. “It really made no sense to build a power plant to prove what’s already being tested in three or four other commercial facilities.”

A spokesman for U. S. Rep. Tim Johnson, an Urbana Republican who has backed the FutureGen project, called the new plan disappointing.

“What they are announcing is a far cry from they were originally talking about,” Phil Bloomer said.

Angela Griffin, an economic development official who worked to bring FutureGen to Mattoon, listened in to Durbin’s teleconference but declined to comment afterward. She said she’d only learned about the change in plans earlier Thursday.

The new project will create 1,000 construction jobs for the pipeline, Durbin said. It will also create 50 new jobs at the Meredosia plant. The small town is about 60 miles northwest of Springfield along the Illinois River.

In addition, a training center is planned for Mattoon to teach workers how to build pipelines like to one planned for this project so that other plants could be retrofitted in similar fashion in the future, Durbin said. It isn’t clear how many jobs are planned there, he said.