Thursday, July 24, 2014

FutureGen 2.0 -- a flagship carbon capture proposal -- got a legal boost yesterday with a court ruling that state utilities can be forced to buy the coal plant's power.

The decision from an Illinois appeals court upheld a 2012 state mandate requiring utilities like Commonwealth Edison to purchase FutureGen 2.0's electricity for 20 years.

While the $1.68 billion coal plant is not scheduled to become operational until 2017, the financing situation was one of several outstanding issues for the project, which envisions the capture of 90 percent of the carbon dioxide at a 168-megawatt coal plant near Meredosia, Ill.

It is one of a handful of planned commercial-scale projects supported by the Department of Energy to demonstrate carbon capture technology.

While it is not as far along as some planned carbon capture projects like the Kemper County Energy Facility (see related story), it is one of the few proposals in the world envisioning tying large-scale capture of CO₂ to permanent storage underground in rock formations, rather than oil fields. (E&E Publishing)