New FutureGen plant plan billions cheaper
Plans to build a multibillion-dollar, experimental coal plant in Mattoon, Ill., have been replaced with a cheaper proposal to retrofit an Ameren plant two-and-a-half hours west in Meredosia, Ill., U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday.
Ameren has come on board with the revamped project, which will use $1 billion in stimulus money and $247 million in private dollars, said Stephanie Muller, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy. This new FutureGen 2.0 plan will be potentially billions of dollars cheaper than its predecessor, she said.
Instead of building a plant from scratch and using gasification technology, a 60-year-old Ameren plant in Meredosia that will be upgraded with oxygen combustion technology, and then carbon dioxide will be transported in pipes to Mattoon for underground storage, she said. Meredosia is 21 miles from Jacksonville, Ill., and 114 miles from St. Louis.
“Gasification makes sense for new plants,” she said. “Oxygen combustion makes more sense for existing plants.”
The FutureGen Alliance, Ameren Energy Resources, Babcock & Wilcox, and Air Liquide Process & Costruction Inc. are behind the so-called “clean-coal repowering program and carbon dioxide storage network.” The plant will use an “oxy-coal carbon capture technology” developed by Babcock & Wilcox in collaboration with Air Liquide Process & Costruction Inc. The process uses oxygen instead of air during combustion, producing flue gas composed of nearly pure carbon dioxide, which is suitable for compression and storage. The companies piloted the technology at B&W’s research facility in Alliance, Ohio, supported by Air Liquide’s technology developments at its research and development facility in Newark, Del.
“B&W’s oxy-coal combustion system, when coupled with Air Liquide’s ASU and CO2 purification and compression technologies, can reduce a plant’s carbon dioxide and other air emissions to near-zero levels,” Ameren Energy Resources President and Chief Executive Charles Naslund said in a statement Thursday.
The updated project was officially awarded $1 billion in previously announced stimulus funding Thursday. The project’s partners estimate the program will bring 900 jobs to downstate Illinois and another 1,000 to suppliers across the state. Ameren Energy Resources estimates that the retrofitting of its old plant will create 500 construction jobs and allow the company to add permanent workers. The Meredosia plant currently has 57 workers. Backers estimate the new pipeline network will create 275 contruction jobs and 75 permanent jobs.
“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,” Chu said in a statement.
Ameren Corp. said Thursday its second-quarter profit fell 8 percent to $152 million from $165 million a year earlier. The utility holding company’s total operating revenue for the three months ended June 30 inched up 1 percent to $1.7 billion from $1.68 billion in the prior-year period. Total operating revenue includes both electric and gas sales. St. Louis-based Ameren Corp. (NYSE: AEE), led by Chairman, President and CEO Thomas Voss, serves 2.4 million electric customers and 1 million natural gas customers in a 64,000-square-mile area of Missouri and Illinois. It has assets of $24 billion.
-Kelsey Volkmann
