An unusual international alliance of private companies and governments is slated to choose a site in the United States for the world’s cleanest coal-fuelled power plant, called FutureGen, by summer 2007.
The alliance includes the governments of India and China, as well as large coal producers and consumers from the US, Britain, China and Australia.
The 12 potential sites — which range from an oil-heavy region in Texas to the plains of North Dakota — must not only have the traditional above-ground access to coal and cooling water, they must also be situated above impermeable rock formations up to three kilometres below ground.
That is because a new technique, called carbon sequestration, is expected to make the pioneering FutureGen plant nearly pollution-free.
Carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas many scientists blame in part for the warming of Earth, is emitted when electricity is produced in traditional coal plants.
At the FutureGen plant, carbon dioxide would not be spewed into the air. Instead, the gas would be liquefied and pumped deep below the ground, where experts say it will remain trapped beneath impermeable rock formations.
”FutureGen will be a stepping stone toward a cleaner, more energy-secure future,” said US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman of the $1-billion project.
Making coal a cleaner technology is very much in the interest of the US. While dependent on foreign sources of oil for transportation, the US sits on the largest coal reserves in the world and gets about 50% of its electricity from coal. The world on average takes 40,1% of its electricity from coal, the World Coal Institute says.
The US has 240 years worth of reserves at the current rate of consumption.
”Coal is by far the most abundant and affordable energy resource,” US President George Bush, a strong supporter of the FutureGen initiative, said in May. ”The problem is, when you burn it, it isn’t clean.”
Fred Palmer, a senior vice-president of Peabody Energy and a member of the board of directors of the FutureGen Alliance, said the president was the driving force behind the project.
”The primary credit goes to [Bush],” Palmer said in an interview.
While the US government is underwriting nearly 75% of the costs, India and China are believed to be contributing about $10-million each and industry partners are collaborating to raise a total of $250-million.
The contributors are formally part of the FutureGen Industrial Alliance, a non-profit consortium of some of the largest coal producers and users in the world who are partnering with the US Department of Energy in the project.
The members are also expected to ”bring valuable technical expertise and industrial project management” to the project, drawing upon ”billions of dollars” of their own past industrial investments, the website said.
In exchange, participants will be able to use the new FuturGen template in their companies and countries.
”Everybody has a shared vision and the same goals,” Palmer said of the coalition’s members.
One milestone was reached in May, when the FutureGen Alliance selected 12 sites in seven US states as the possible home for the first clean coal plant.
”The level of interest and number of proposals indicate the growing recognition of the important role that technologies using abundant, low-cost coal will play in securing our energy future with affordable electricity and minimal environmental impacts,” said Mike Mudd, the chief executive officer of the alliance.
For the communities that have applied to become the host site, FutureGen will bring jobs and revenues.
A year before the site is to be selected and six years before it is scheduled to operate, FutureGen has not only caught presidential attention, evidenced by a reference in Bush’s annual State of the Union address, but also drawn publicity to an industry that has gone largely unnoticed.
While the world focuses on rising oil prices, coal, the world’s second largest greenhouse emissions generator after oil, often only grabs headlines when it comes to global warming.
FutureGen has changed that, Palmer said.
”I have been in the coal industry for 25 years and people have paid no attention to us,” he said.
He understands why the clean-emissions coal plant is changing that in a world where people have to worry about energy security as well as global warming.
”It’s pretty easy to be enthusiastic about FutureGen,” Palmer said. ‒ Sapa-DPA