The Capitol Fax Blog

Friday, Jan 11, 2008

* The skeptics may have been right…

U.S. Rep. John Shimkus says the low-pollution FutureGen power plant planned for Mattoon could be downsized and the project changed to include several sites around the country.

Shimkus, a Republican from Collinsville, told the Mattoon Journal-Gazette he’s heard the Department of Energy is considering that scenario and others to cut the project’s $1.8 billion price.

The power and coal companies developing the plant announced last month they will build in Mattoon. But the Energy Department, providing most of the money, is concerned about the cost.

* More…

Shimkus said Thursday he believes downsizing and restructuring FutureGen make it more feasible.

“I’m afraid if we go as planned, we get nothing,” Shimkus said Thursday in a phone interview with The News-Gazette.

“The DOE is scrambling for a way to do it with the current cost escalations,” Shimkus said. “Rescoping means a lot of things. I think it could mean the ability to produce more power and sell it on the grid, (or do) limited research at one site and another aspect of the research at another site.”

* Some earlier triumphalistic background from the governor’s office is here.

- posted by Rich Miller

22 Comments

- GoBearsss - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 12:00 pm:
DOE is trying to do it in a way that still pays off their Texas friends.

Cue the line “…and the project changed to include several sites around the country.”

Like I said before. This isn’t going to get started until the next president is in the White House.

And we will see Texas feeding at the trough no more.

It will go ahead just fine.

- Pot calling kettle - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 12:10 pm:
Ditto Bearss. If the site were in Texas, semi truckloads of cash would be on the way already to ensure the project is well under way before the new admin comes in.

- Squideshi - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 12:19 pm:
I’m sick of people calling FutureGen zero emissions. It’s not zero emissions–they’re just pumping the emissions into the ground!

- VanillaMan - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 12:20 pm:
You guys are speaking gibberish.

This is what Texas got.

As you can see, having a president from your state doesn’t guarantee porkbarrelling, except from Mr. Porkbarrel himself, Senator Byrd.

So, your Bush Conspiracy is dead wrong.

- SO ILL - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 12:35 pm:
“more feasible”?
This coming from a congressmen who doesn’t blink an eye to the fulsome war spending, which is what $5 or $8 billion a month?

Where’s Costello? He’s the one that has actually worked to bring FutureGen to Illinois, and not just rolled over every time an obsticle has arisen in this long process. Because he GETS it, he knows what this can do for this state and for technology as a whole.

- GoBearsss - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 12:51 pm:
VanillaMan - your link only buttresses my argument:

“The system was first envisioned in the December 1983 National Reference Designs Study, which examined the technical and economic feasibility of a machine with the design capacity of 20 TeV per beam. After an extensive Department of Energy review during the mid-1980s, a site selection process began in 1987. The project was awarded to Texas in November 1988 and major construction began in 1991. Seventeen shafts were sunk and 23.5 km (14.6 miles) of tunnel were bored by late 1993.”

Looks like Texas was selected with Bush as VP, it got funding when Bush was president, and lost funding through Congress when Bush was gone in 1993.

- DC - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 1:05 pm:
Texas offered an ungodly amount of incentives to get this development. If there was some insidious insider knowledge about presidential political preferences, the folks in Texas would not have offered so much up-front incentive money. Don’t be bashing Texas because you’re upset that Governor Free Bus Ride jumped the gun on a press conference and formal announcement before the DOE signed off on the deal.

Perhaps Blagojevich thought he could “improve” the DOEs final report, who knows, but the reality is the State of Illinois and FutureGen jumped the gun before they should have. I said it weeks ago when the announcement was made, I’m saying today, and I’ll say it up until the DOE decision is finalized.

- GoBearsss - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 1:35 pm:
It wasn’t the Governor who announced this - it was the FutureGen alliance. The people in charge with picking the site.

- Taylorville Guy - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 1:36 pm:
The only sure thing for the Illinois coal industry and electricity consumers is to build the Taylorville Energy Center. Our plant is ready to go. The Senate passed legislation enabling it to move forward 48-0. CUB’s on board. The AFLCIO’s on board. If only the Speaker and AG would get out of the way, that project moves forward.

- Six Degrees of Separation - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 1:52 pm:
The counties of North and Central IL are slowly being dotted with electricity-generating windmills. Ten years from now, they will have pumped a lot of juice into the grid (at least when the wind blows), with very low environmental impacts, while this “experimental” facility or facilities may just be generating a trickle…if they’re even running by then.

- Pot calling kettle - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 2:15 pm:
The ultimate environmental payoff of FutureGen would be retrofit of existing coal-fired plants of which Illinois (and the US, and the world) have plenty.

- VanillaMan - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 2:28 pm:
If you believe in things you don’t understand you end up with conspiracy theories replacing your common sense.

- Pot calling kettle - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 3:08 pm:
VM, It’s not a conspiracy, it’s political reality. Money flows to power, when the power goes away, so does the money. The Energy Dept. started to hedge as soon as they knew where the project was headed. Once the announcement was made, it would be harder to change the decision.

Some silly person made the FutureGen call based on science. That just ruined everything.

- one of the 35 - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 3:20 pm:
This appears to be a function of politics. Hastert is no longer Speaker of the House. Illinois is no longer a Republican state. It appears that we will have a democrat president after the next election. Maybe if we can postpone the final decision until the controlling party in Illinois matches the presidential party, we would stand a better chance. I’m just speaking dispassionately from a Machiavellian perspective.

- Sango Dem - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 3:25 pm:
FutureGen will be pumping emissions into the air as well. It is in no way a “zero” emissions power plant. Check their EPA permit.

- DC - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 3:30 pm:
Some silly person counted their chickens before they hatched. As I recall, even Senator Dick Durbin suggested that the decision be delayed until the DOE complete its approval process. Surely Dickie D didn’t take that position because he wanted the project to go to Texas. If anything, he would have urged DOE to expedite their process rather than making a fully informed decision based on science and COST. I hope the decision favors Illinois, but the reality is, despite the black helicopter theories to the contrary, FutureGen and all the government and coal agencies involved called a press conference before they should have.

- Pot calling kettle - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 3:30 pm:
It would be nice to see a big program to develop efficient technology. Unfortunately, the US has rarely embraced using less.

- Angry Chicagoan - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 3:50 pm:
Pot calling kettle is right on. FutureGen’s selection process was open, transparent and based on sound fundamentals. My belief is that BushCo started to throw up roadblocks as soon as southern Illinois emerged. Perhaps they waited so long because they couldn’t believe FutureGen would pass on a welfare check like that. But apparently FutureGen was more concerned with having the plant in a location that actually worked for them on an ongoing basis.

- 45er - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 3:57 pm:
Slightly off the topic but did anyone hear the Speaker chop Rep. Rose off at the knees yesterday in debate. Rose was doing his usual yapping about everything going to Chicago when the Speakerm citing his perogative, hammered Rose by noting that he supported Future Gen.

- ids - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 4:14 pm:
The cost of “clean coal” is not cheap and pouring taxpayer money down the the sequestration drain is a mega-waste.

- Getting Grumpy - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 4:23 pm:
I live in Illinois, pay taxes in Illinois and question the need for my taxes to be spent on this project. Would I prefer Texas to Illinois, absolutely not. If it is going to be built I want it to be built and the money spent in Illinois. But, this is a project for private industry. It has taken too long to develop. Two members of this same consortium have announced that they plan to build in China a power plant that will have the CO2 sequestered in an underground formation….just like this project. I wonder where the technology they are developing for the FutureGen project is being diverted? How much has the Government already put into this project? If private industry wants to develop technology to meet the energy needs of the future, and with some logic and forsight to also meet future environmental demands, let them do it. Get the Government;a.k.a you and me, out of it.

- Make it work - Friday, Jan 11, 08 @ 4:23 pm:
It’s time for the private sector to kick more money into the FutureGen project, given the escalating costs. This technology should have been deployed years ago. Unfortunately, the utilities and coal companies decided to keep the old, polluting plants going much longer than they should have instead of investing in cleaner technology. And the Taylorville Energy Center is not the answer as long as it plans to pump CO2 in the air and not the ground.

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