FUTUREGEN 2.0 - DECADE-LONG
QUEST FOR CLEAN COAL - STILL
A QUIXOTIC ILLUSION
From an article appearing in the
Seattle Times
It has been more than ten years since President George W.
Bush unveiled plans for the world’s first zero-emissions coal plant.
The “FutureGen” plant was supposed
to serve as a showcase of America’s ability to reduce carbon emissions from fossil
fuels. The project would be “one of the boldest steps our nation takes toward a
pollution-free future...... and will help turn coal from an environmentally
challenging energy resource into an environmentally benign one, ” according to
Spencer Abraham, Bush’s Secretary of Energy.
More than a decade later, there has yet to be a
groundbreaking for “FutureGen 2.0”, as the project is currently known, after it
was resurrected, restructured and redesigned by the Obama administration in 2009.
Originally based on building a new advanced IGCC plant using pre-combustion
carbon capture, today’s plan calls for overhauling a 1940s vintage power station in Illinois to oxy-combustion so that its carbon emissions can be captured, compressed
and stored some 4,300 feet underground.
But the effort continues to be plagued by political infighting, design
changes and escalating costs that helped trigger a legal battle with the
state’s largest utility, and threaten the project for a second time.
Tortured
birthing process
FutureGen’s tortured birthing process reflects broader problems
in the global effort to develop “clean coal” plants and carbon-capture
technology — considered to be key steps in the battle to slow climate change.
Even the US Energy Department now has doubts about whether
FutureGen will succeed, considering the project as a “high-risk” in its ability
to meet a September 2015 deadline for spending $1 billion in federal stimulus
dollars awarded in the early days of the first Obama term in the White House.
Although the International Energy Agency has declared carbon
capture to be a key part of the struggle to head off impacts of climate change, so
far no country has succeed, either with regulations, or with financial
incentives, to spur commercial implementation of the costly and
still evolving technology.
Moreover, the debate over the carbon-capture strategy itself still clouds issue. Many renewable-energy advocates don’t see carbon
capture as a viable strategy to fight climate change. They are convinced solar,
wind, hydroelectric, and perhaps nuclear power, can be the mainstay of 21st
century global energy.
Supporters of carbon capture say that the world will be slow
to shift from the use of fossil fuels. And they forecast that
carbon capture — even with costs of upwards of 70 percent higher than
traditional coal plants — will, in the long run, be a cheaper option than paying the costs
associated with extremes of climate changes.
“This is the only game in town,” said Edward Rubin, a lead
author of a carbon-capture report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change.
Prototype
Plant
But
utilities and regulators balk at carbon-capture costs. Many proposed projects
have been canceled. And concerns have been heightened by a carbon-capture plant
now under construction in Mississippi (Kemper County IGCC Project) that is
running $3 billion over budget.
FutureGen
2.0, is now estimated to cost some $1.65 billion for the conversion of the 168MW Meredosia plant. It is designed to be the first commercial scale
demonstration of a technology, known as oxy-combustion, that can capture and store
more than 90 percent plant’s carbon emissions.
About 40 percent of the cost is to
be privately financed, with the rest of the money coming from the federal
grant.
“FutureGen is a prototype plant," said Ken Humphreys, chief
executive officer of FutureGen. "It’s
not surprising that its cost of electricity is higher."
Although the coal companies that
control FutureGen funding say carbon-capture technology holds promise for the
future, they appear skeptical that it can be put into place anytime soon.
Along with coal-burning utilities they are fighting the proposed EPA rule that would require partial carbon
capture (to natural gas equivalence) in any new coal plant, as well as another proposed rule that calls for
emission reductions in states with existing fossil fuel plants.
The technology “is simply not
commercially available,” declared Peabody Energy, a key member of the FutureGen
Alliance, in a statement released last September.
An idea whose time had come – and passed?
At the turn of the new century,
clean coal looked like an idea whose time had come.
In 2000 Republican candidate Bush
declared that he would require power plants to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions
and place an overall cap on U.S. carbon emissions
.
Three years later, the Bush
administration launched FutureGen as a 10-year effort to build a carbon-capture
plant. "A zero-emissions coal-burning power plant."
But Bush and
his administration soon cooled on the idea tackling global warming and abandoned the call for
capping emissions. Government reports downplayed concerns about climate change.
Sam Bodman,
Abraham’s successor at DOE, scrapped the idea of building the FutureGen plant
in favor of a series of smaller projects.
Then, in
December 2007, in a total PR debacle, the FutureGen Alliance announced its "final"
selection of Mattoon, IL as the site of the new carbon-capture coal plant. But hours
later, in a surprise move, the DOE pulled the rug from under the Alliance's feet, and disclosed that the project would be restructured “due to
escalating costs.”
Mattoon would not get its plant, and FutureGen was effectively dead - at least as far as the Bush administration was concerned.
From Mattoon
to Meredosia
But in January
2009, a junior senator from Illinois, who
had been a loyal backer of a FutureGen project in his home state, took up residence in the White House.
In fact, President Obama's
campaign platform had actually called for federal assistance to build four
commercial-scale carbon-capture plants, and FutureGen was no doubt among the ones he was planning on.
During his
first few months in office, President Obama worked with the Illinois congressional delegation to get FutureGen back on track with a $1 billion “stimulus
package” earmark from Congress.
With new
money came new design ideas.
Instead of
a new IGCC + CC plant in Mattoon, the plan called for retrofitting the old Meredosia plant, owned by Ameren
Energy Resources, with a new oxygen-rich boiler. This
oxy-combustion process concentrates carbon emissions so they can be readily
captured from the plant exhaust and prepared for long-term storage.
The Energy Department was again extremely bullish when it announced FutureGen 2.0.
in 2010.
The
investment will “... position the country as a leader in an important part of
the global clean energy economy,” said Steven Chu, the new-Energy Secretary, as
he announced the siting.
Beacon
of hope – still glimmers, barely
The
Meredosia plant first began producing power back in 1948, but the plant has
operated only sporadically since the late 1990s, reflecting the condition of the region.
The FutureGen project was seen by many in the mostly rundown little
town as a “beacon of hope” that could revive the community.
But the revamped project soon suffered a major defections and
setbacks.
In summer 2011, Ameren, owner of the plant site, decided to
withdraw its participation when it concluded that the conversion to carbon
capture would cost nearly $400 million more than initially forecast.
The dwindling FutureGen Alliance, then down to five members has been
scrambling to come up with the $650 million of private money to finance the
project
Most of that money will be borrowed, with the debt paid off
through a 20-year power sale approved by the Illinois Commerce Commission that
was more than five times the price of the state’s current (2013) spot market prices.
In 2013, Exelon, the parent of Commonwealth Edison, the state’s
largest utility, declaring that “customers should not be forced to pay enormous
above-market charges for electricity,” joined with state electricity
suppliers to challenge the contract terms in a lawsuit.
Although the Illinois appellate court decided in favor of
FutureGen last month, one of the plaintiffs plans to appeal to the state
Supreme Court.
While the legal battle drags on, FutureGen could not close a deal
for private financing. And without that private money in hand, DOE officials
would not be able to release the federal grant funds required for construction.
The start-up date, once scheduled for June, got pushed back yet
again to later this year. These delays make it ever more difficult to meet the
September 2015 deadline for spending the $1 billion federal grant.
So this American vision of clean coal — as pursued by two presidents
— remains elusive.
And FutureGen, for the moment at least, is more a lessons-learned cautionary footnote than a living
inspiration for those considering converting a coal plant to carbon capture.
