Downstate Illinois town wins new clean coal plant: UPDATED

Here's a strike, however small, against the OPEC nations. FutureGen, a clean-coal plant will will be built, and the east central Illinois town of Mattoon is the winner in the competiton to land the facility. This a big deal for Mattoon.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

A consortium of the world’s largest mining companies and electric utilities chose the small east-central Illinois town of Mattoon for FutureGen — a $1.75 billion coal-fueled power plant that will be among the world’s cleanest.
Michael J. Mudd, chief executive of the FutureGen Industrial Alliance, made the announcement Tuesday morning at a news conference in Washington D.C., ending an 20-month odyssey for four towns that were among finalists competing to host the project.

Winning the FutureGen derby means the biggest economic jolt for Mattoon in years, including an estimated 1,300 temporary construction jobs and 150 full-time jobs when the plant begins operation in 2012.

The U.S. Department of Energy proposed FutureGen in 2003 as a way to prove the feasibility of producing electricity and hydrogen from coal with near-zero emissions in hopes that it can jump-start similar projects on a larger scale in the U.S. and around the world.

UPDATE 6:30 PM

Uh...not so fast here...From the Chicago "free registration required" Tribune:

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

"Projected cost overruns require a reassessment of FutureGen's design," read a statement from Energy Department official James Slutz. He said the department would provide more details next month on plans to restructure FutureGen.

The downcast statement quickly soured the party atmosphere in Downstate Mattoon, which just hours earlier had been picked by a consortium of utilities, coal companies and the Energy Department as the site for the plant designed to test whether abundant coal can be used to make power with little pollution.

Federal officials had asked the consortium to delay today's announcement, but were rebuffed. The private power firms largely control the project, though the Energy Department will pay most of the costs and has the power to stop it from going forward. As costs have risen, the department has tried to get the private sector to pick up a greater share, but has so far not been successful.

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