Illinois to Get a Low-Emission Coal-Fired Power Plant

Another problem with FutureGen is that no one has pointed out exactly how much power this thing is going to generate and how much it will cost. At 2x to 3x the cost of a typical coal-fired power plant, look for FutureGen’s levelized cost of electricity to be more expensive than solar when it comes online in 6-8 years. When I think about the differences in EU and American energy policy, I cry for the loss of childhood innocence.

Keep crying Green Goblin.  In the meantime, the US, USSR, and China are going to burn lots and lots of coal.  You can’t just turn that off.

Sequestration is a longshot but we have to do something and FutureGen tries to do something.  Coal is with us for a long time - we need to optimize its’ usage.  Think of FutureGen as a transition technology.

greengoblin
I gotta agree with Norrin - King Coal aint getting old! The stuff is cheap and plentiful and the simple laws of capital efficiency will make it irresistible to the drivers of economic growth. Some problems are so hard that you have to go through experimentation to make progress and so FutureGen makes sense. The real question is - is having the govt. fund this the best way to spend the $$?  I would rather the govt. mandate CO2 sequestration for all plants to be built in the next 2-5 years and the industry pay for it by passing on the costs of energy to consumers. Much more equitable to get the largest consumers to pay more for the experiment than to dip into tax revenue.

You’re killing me here. If the Russians and the Chinese jumped off the Three Gorges Dam, you’d probably be the first one in after them. Don’t think your silver surfboard will save you there, buddy. Not only is sequestration a long shot, but its an expensive shot too. American efforts (and taxpayer money) would be better spent developing a robust renewable energy industry with proven zero-fuel, zero-emissions technology. Google is devoting a few hundred million dollars to building a 1 GW solar thermal plant, which is enough to power a major U.S. city. If the government took the 1.5 billion its dumping down the hole with FutureGen and began developing these baseload solar thermal plants, it could provide power to a handful of major metropolitan areas with power left over.  Furthermore, we have no idea about the effects of burying these emissions. It’s the same mentality that brought us the ozone hole and climate change. “Let’s just dump these pollutants somewhere and worry about it later.” I’m just glad I won’t be in Illinois when the ground blows up and the crops die from soil pollution. They won’t have anything to cheer about then.

Funny how pro-coal folks don’t seem to keep track of the actual numbers.

Coal, the fuel, is indeed cheap and relatively abundant.

But coal as value-added source of electricity is anything but cheap. In fact, the numbers are so bad that over a dozen coal plants proposed over the past few years have been scrapped; not to mention the fact that you can’t even sell coal power to California anymore.

The news about FutureGen is a lot of spin, little substance. Picking a site for a plant is a tiny step on the long path to actually building the thing. I’ll bet anyone on this site that, 10 years and $5 billion later, FutureGen will be little more than a big hole in the ground and a twinkle in Peabody’s eye. Meanwhile, for the same money, we will dramatically improve efficiency and build another few thousand megawatts of wind, solar and geothermal power.

CO2 muncher, if the market worked the way you suggest - i.e. let the private sector figure it out - you’d see every coal and nuclear plant get wiped off the drawing board. Coal and nukes only work when the costs can be passed on to taxpayers and ratepayers. You can’t raise private money for them, because, like I siad ... they don’t paper out.

Here’s an update on FutureGen from the Chicago Tribune:

Just hours after Illinois won a national competition for a cutting-edge clean coal project, the Department of Energy on Tuesday cautioned that costs were getting out of hand and it wasn’t ready to sign off on the $1.8 billion FutureGen power plant.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/thursday/chi-1220edit3dec20,0,1375295.story

miguel,
I think a few clarifications are in order:

1. coal power plants cannot be built because of emissions restrictions - precisely why experimenting with technologies to capture and store emissions is critical

2. the above statement is based on the notion that renewables are more expensive in terms of levelized cost of electricity than coal fired plants. Although I have not pulled numbers on this, that seems to be the general consensus. In any case I am not advocating ignoring renewables; all I am saying is that we cannot ignore coal either; you will find that same reality reflected here: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/submitted_Kharecha_Hansen.pdf

3. I agree that coal plants are getting very expensive because of the cost of raw materials. You cannot purchase a wind turbine today - there is a 3 years wait and no vendor quotes prices since they dont know what the price of metal and other ingredients will be 3 years from now. That being said I believe that the cost of building coal fired power should be primarily borne by consumers and not taxpayers - that is the only equitable approach and the only way to inject self-regulation of consumption into the electricity marketplace. Self-regulation will promote efficiency and force us to recognize the true cost of power. Subsidizing via taxes keeps us feeling safe and sound rather than expose us to the dangers of our habits.

Illuminating post:  http://www.ecotality.com/blog/2007/cost-to-build-power-plants-rising/

Aren’t labor and anti-globalization sentiments going to be raging against the closing of coal mines eventually, given that it’s perceived as a strong domestic labor and energy market? That sort of political calculus seems to be missing from this conversation.

At the costs quoted for the “clean coal” project, nuclear fission power is a far better investment. Per unit of heat, manufactured nuclear fuel costs about 1/2 as much as “cheap” coal and that price is available without regard to location since transportation costs are minimal with deliveries required every 18 months. For coal power plants, location is often a key measure of economy since fuel transportation can double or triple the cost of the fuel.

There are NO renewable power sources that have a whisper of hope of providing reliable, weather independent electricity. At best they help to avoid fuel burning when they are available. The solar panels that are mentioned in the story are quoted at maximum capacity yet they produce that amount of power only at noon on a clear day - at all other times of day their production is less than capacity. At night - a condition that happens with predictable regularity - their production is zero.

When it comes to jobs, nuclear plants are a huge winner. Each plant in the US provides between 600-1200 high paying jobs with excellent benefits and training. Politically speaking, what we need is for nukes to start speaking up to explain that they can do as much for the economy as any coal or renewable project. We have an excellent safety record, low cost fuel that can be sourced from the US and friendly democracies, and we do not produce ANY greenhouse gases during power plant operation. If we were smart, we would supply mines and enrichment plants from nuclear power and totally eliminate the association of nuclear power with fossil fuel consumption.

Dear fallout boy,
Like most nuke industry shills you neglect the inconvenient issues of mining, transporting, and disposing of spent nuclear fuel.  These little externalities tend to play havoc with your cheap fuel costs. 
Why won’t Wall St. finance nuclear plants - why do they have to rely on government loan guarantees?  Because the market has determined that nuke plants are dangerous and never come in close to budget.  Nuke plants should not be part of the US energy mix.  They certainly don’t qualify as clean energy.