The U.S. Department of Energy on Thursday announced the award of $1 billion in Recovery Act funding to the FutureGen Alliance, Ameren Energy Resources (NYSE: AEE), Babcock & Wilcox, and Air Liquide Process & Costruction, Inc. (AI.PA) to build FutureGen 2.0–a so-called clean coal repowering program and carbon dioxide (CO2) storage network.
The project partners estimate the program will bring 900 cleantech jobs to downstate Illinois and another 1,000 to suppliers across the state.
"This investment in the world’s first, commercial-scale, oxy-combustion power plant will help to open up the over $300 billion market for coal unit repowering and position the country as a leader in an important part of the global clean energy economy," said Secretary Chu, who was a notabe critic of carbon capture before being promoted to his cabinet post.
To capture the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by a power plant and store
it underground would require 20% of that power plant’s electricity
output, according to analysts. That’s one of the reasons CCS has been labeled as a "false hope" by some critics.
However,with the funds announced Thursday, the partner recipients will repower Ameren’s 200-megawatts (MW) Unit 4 in Meredosia, Illinois with advanced oxy-combustion technology. The plant’s new boiler, air separation unit, CO2 purification and compression unit will deliver 90% CO2 capture and eliminate most SOx, NOx, mercury, and particulate emissions.
Oxy-combustion burns coal with a mixture of oxygen and CO2 instead of
air to produce a concentrated CO2 stream for storage. In addition,
oxy-combustion technology is said to create a near-zero emissions plant
by eliminating almost all of the mercury, SOx, NOx, and particulate
pollutants from plant emissions. The Department of Energy’s National
Energy Technology Laboratory studies have identified oxy-combustion as
potentially the least cost approach to clean-up existing coal-fired
facilities and capture CO2 for geologic storage.
This project will also provide performance and emissions data for future commercial guarantees, and establish operating and maintenance experience for future large-scale commercial projects. The FutureGen Alliance will help design the test program for the new facility to incorporate a broad range of coals and operating conditions to expand the market for this repowering approach.
In addition, the project partners, working with the State of Illinois, will establish a regional CO2 storage site in Mattoon, Illinois and a CO2 pipeline network from Meredosia to Mattoon that will transport and store more than 1 million tons of captured CO2 per year. The Mattoon site will be used to conduct research on site characterization, injection and storage, and monitoring and measurement.
In Other DOE News…
DOE is extending the application deadline for the July 2009 energy efficiency, renewable energy and advanced transmission and distribution technologies solicitation. The new Part 1 application deadline is October 5, 2010. This gives companies an additional six weeks to apply for a loan guarantee under Section 1705, provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The Part II application deadline is still December 31, 2010.
More information on this program is available at the link below.
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