Keep FutureGen at Mattoon Moving forward
The United States is facing an enormous challenge to address climate change, and the original FutureGen project at Mattoon, Ill. is a reasonable and necessary investment to advance near-zero emission coal-fueled power technology with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

Paul Thompson, chairman of the FutureGen Alliance, testified before the Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations subcommittee and said that the Alliance is very mindful of the fact that federal dollars are a limited and valuable resource, but believes that FutureGen at Mattoon is a good investment for our nation. FutureGen at Mattoon offers the opportunity to advance many technologies faster and further than any other project in the world and it would be a huge mistake to move backward on the progress we have already made.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has cited higher costs and a changing marketplace as reasons for restructuring the FutureGen program. The increase in costs is due to inflation and not scope changes, which DOE acknowledged when they signed the Cooperative Agreement that governs the project in March 2007.

It is difficult to understand why these costs were acceptable in March 2007, but in January 2008 they formed the primary basis for their proposal to restructure the program. The Alliance is effectively managing costs, is contributing nearly $400 million toward the project and continues to reiterate its offer to the DOE to explore reasonable avenues to mitigate the federal government’s exposure, Thompson said.

Furthermore, the marketplace for clean coal power plants has changed, but not for the better. There are numerous proposed clean coal power plants, but many of them will not be built due to cost and regulatory uncertainty. In the last year, the number of projects has declined, so the market is not as stable as the DOE has suggested.

Given the lack of clarity in DOE’s restructured plan and the five years of delay that would result, early action to advance CCS technology through FutureGen at Mattoon is a necessary and wise national policy to address climate change. DOE’s proposal to restructure FutureGen has many business and technical issues and it’s under-funded. Making the necessary investments on the front-end to advance the technology is a smart national strategy.