Funding canceled for clean coal plant

Feds back out of $800 million remainder, citing doubts on ability to meet spending deadline

Plans to retrofit this coal power plant in Meredosia, Ill., with technology to enable it to cleanly separate carbon pollution and store it underground have been scrapped after the U.S. Department of Energy cut funding for the project.

FutureGen Alliance

By Beth Mole

February 6, 2015 at 1:33 pm

Under a looming budget deadline, the U.S. Department of Energy has dropped its plan to give $1 billion in funding to FutureGen 2.0, a $1.65 billion clean coal project in Illinois.

The project would have retrofitted a coal power plant with new technology to sequester 1.1 million metric tons of carbon pollution underground each year (SN: 9/6/14, p. 22). The cut most likely means the project will not continue.

The funding, awarded to the FutureGen Alliance in 2010, was set to expire in September. But the alliance had used only $200 million to date, and DOE was not convinced that FutureGen could spend the rest and complete the project by the deadline.