A Clean-Coal Plant May Yet Be Built in State
NEWS LAST WEEK that the U.S. Department of Energy had abandoned the FutureGen clean-coal power plant project landed like a bomb here. Lost amid its explosion and the aftershocks that followed was some potentially very good news on another Illinois clean-coal project.
The day after the Energy Department pulled the plug on FutureGen, another federal entity removed a hurdle that could one day make Taylorville the country’s center of clean-coal technology.
LAST THURSDAY, the U.S. Environmental Appeals Board denied the Sierra Club’s appeal of the air permit for the Taylorville Energy Center. That plant, to be built by Tenaska Inc., is designed to use Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle technology to remove pollutants from coal it burns. Where FutureGen would have injected carbon dioxide emissions into the ground, IGCC technology uses heat, pressure, oxygen and water to convert the coal into a clean-burning gas, removing pollutants in the process. Those behind the Taylorville plant also have said they would use injection technology when it becomes commercially viable.
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency had issued the air permit in June 2007. The Sierra Club challenged the permit, saying the plant as designed did not do enough to contain greenhouse gases.
The rejection of the Sierra Club’s challenge leaves only one hurdle for the Taylorville project. This time, though, it’s not the Energy Department in Washington that holds the project’s future. It’s the Illinois House of Representatives.
BEFORE BREAKING ground on this $2 billion project, which would bring an estimated 600 jobs to the Taylorville area, Tenaska wants a change in Illinois law that would require Ameren and Commonwealth Edison to buy some of their power from the Taylorville plant, and would allow utilities enter into long-term deals with energy producers.
Essentially, Tenaska wants to be sure that if it invests $2 billion in this plant, the plant will have guaranteed buyers for the energy it produces.
The Illinois Senate passed the bill 48-0 in July and sent it back to the House.
It has stalled there because of concern that consumers could be hurt if there are cost overruns at the Tenaska plant, making its power prohibitively more expensive to the utilities than electricity from conventional coal plants.
But, as Tenaska has said, the Illinois Commerce Commission still would have final say over the rates. They also argue that clean- coal technology will be a far better deal for consumers in the future than nuclear and natural-gas fired power plants.
THE ILLINOIS Attorney General’s Office raised the concern that stopped the bill last summer, but has also expressed its interest in seeing consumer protections enacted that will let the project go forward.
The state Senate already has signed off on this bill without a single no vote. We believe the House should be able to do the same if the bill’s sponsors work with the attorney general’s office.
If this project meets the same fate as FutureGen, Illinois won’t have Washington to blame.
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