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Ameren's Coal Carbon-Capture Plant Gets $1 Billion From Obama
2010-08-06 04:01:01.5 GMT
By Jim Snyder and Christopher Martin
Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration pledged $1
billion in stimulus funds to capture carbon emissions from a
coal-fired Ameren Corp. power plant in Illinois, the biggest
U.S. effort to show the polluting fuel can be made cleaner.
The FutureGen 2.0 project will revamp a 200-megawatt unit
at Ameren's plant in Meredosia, Illinois, Energy Secretary
Steven Chu and Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said
in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Babcock & Wilcox Co. and a
group of energy companies are participants in the plan.
The project replaces a stalled Bush administration plan to
build a clean-coal plant from the ground up in Mattoon,
Illinois. Instead, the new proposal calls for a network of
pipelines to deliver carbon dioxide generated from burning coal
to a repository in Mattoon that may serve as a storage site for
other plants in the region.
The award will "help ensure the U.S. remains competitive
in a carbon-constrained economy, creating jobs while reducing
greenhouse gas pollution," Chu said in the statement.
The project will demonstrate how carbon dioxide emissions
from coal-fueled power plants can be captured from smokestacks
and shipped for storage, the Energy Department said.
Coal generates about half of U.S. electricity and accounts
for about 40 percent of its manmade emissions, which most
scientists say contributes to global warming. Coal also is the
most abundant fossil fuel source in the U.S.
The revised project remains a "boondoggle," said Bruce
Nilles, director of energy programs for the San Francisco-based
Sierra Club.
'Smarter, Cheaper Ways'
"There are smarter, cheaper ways to cut pollution without
relying on 19th century fossil-fuel technology,"
FutureGen 2.0 is intended to retrofit a 200-megawatt unit
at Ameren's Meredosia plant with an "advanced oxy-combustion"
technology, new boiler, and air-separation unit to capture 90
percent of the plant's carbon dioxide emissions. It would also
cut most emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides that cause smog
and acid rain, as well as toxic mercury.
Testing the technology on the Ameren plant will help
determine whether more coal plants can be retrofitted to
continue operating economically, the developers said. The plant
rebuilding and pipeline will create about 775 construction jobs,
they said.
The Energy Department's original plan for the project was
to build a 275-megawatt plant that transforms coal into a gas to
make it cleaner-burning. That project was dropped after cost
estimates more than doubled the initial $950 million price tag.
The accuracy of those estimates remained in dispute.
For Related News and Information:
Top energy stories: ETOP <GO>
Ameren's peer comparison: AEE US <Equity> PPC <GO>
--Editors: Larry Liebert, Steve Walsh
To contact the reporters on this story:
Jim Snyder in Washington at +1-202-624-1972 or
jsnyder24@bloomberg.net;
Christopher Martin in New York at +1-212-617-5198 or
cmartin11@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Larry Liebert at +1-202-624-1936 or
lliebert@bloomberg.net.
