UPDATE: FutureGen Project Killed
It’s official - US DOE killed the $1.8 billion project yesterday. There is still minimal hope with Congress, but it doesn’t look good for the people of Mattoon, IL. DOE Secretary, Clay Sell says that he was just trying to help the people who but their heart and soul into the project by killing it now instead of letting it fester for 2 years and killing it later.
“Now, had I just wanted to wash my hands of this, I would have let it go and the folks of Mattoon, Ill., could have continued to celebrate this for a year or maybe two years, and then when the same [plan] went south, I could have blamed it on the next administration for failing to bring this great idea to fruition,” Sell said.
Senator Dick Durbin was offended by that comment and said that Sell should come down to Mattoon and get their opinion. It might be slightly different. I think it’d probably be something like, “hey Sell, get bent! You are friggin crazy. If this were in Texas, the plant would be half built by now you S.O.B.”
Source: Chicago Tribune
I would not be too unhappy about the canning of the project. Burying CO2 does not seem to be a brilliant idea, have you ever heard of Lake Nyos? You may not realise that the ground that has water or oil or natural gas in it, it’s not vast underground caverns, it’s porous rock, like a big underground rocky sponge. So it’s not as simple as an underground cavern would be, like a big bottle - put the stopper on and it’s closed forever. It’s much more complex to keep safe. And this is a new technology, so mistakes will be made.
Much better not to burn the stuff to make CO2 in the first place. Calling coal-fired electricity generation “green” because they’re pumping it underground is like saying, “Well, that nuke station buries the waste under our houses near the aquifer, so it’s environmentally-friendly!”
[...] nearly a billion dollars to clean coal research and development. “ Clean coal. Sure. I know about FutureGen. It got shutdown before it started - probably because Texas didn’t win. Coal is still a [...]