Clean Coal's Future Now Riding on One Project

It's called FutureGen and it's a $1.5 billion project that by 2012 will build a coal-fired power plant with a carbon footprint of nearly zero. At least that is the hope. The plant will capture the carbon dioxide emissions, and then pump them underground for storage, presumably forever. This was supposed to be one of many demonstration projects. Now it's the only game in town.

Pieces of the technology are in use or being tested around the world, but no single project combines the processes needed to operate a coal gasification plant and to store carbon permanently at a commercial scale and an economical price, [Makovich said.]

When FutureGen was proposed, "there were going to be all kinds of projects that were going to do this," [said Oliver.] "But none of them are going forward."

Here's FutureGen's homepage on the US Department of Energy's web site, which is spnsoring the initaitive, together with private industry, including China's largest
coal-based power company, China Huaneng Group.


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