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US Pulls Plug on Low-CO2 Powerplant Project

Posted by Zonk on from the always-fun-to-breath dept.

Geoffrey.landis writes "The administration announced plans to withdraw its support from FutureGen. FutureGen was a project to develop a low CO2-emission electrical power plant, supported by an alliance of a dozen or so coal companies and utilities from around the world. The new plant would have captured carbon dioxide produced by combustion and pumped it deep underground, to avoid releasing greenhouse-gas into the atmosphere. It had been intended as a prototype for next generation clean-coal plants worldwide. Originally budgeted at about a billion dollars, the estimated cost had "ballooned" to $1.8 billion, according to U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman."

2 of 360 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No big deal. by RealGrouchy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can buy a shit load of grid tied windmills for 1.8 billion dollars... Yes, but the fact is coal companies (who were supporting this FutureGen project) probably wouldn't.

    - RG>
    --
    Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
  2. Re:Who cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Clean coal, fine. I'm sure there are ways to "scrub" CO2 if we think long and hard enough. Coal gasification plants for instance are said to be a lot cleaner than "conventional" coal plants, albeit not when it comes to the release of CO2 unfortunately, in fact a lot more CO2 is created. But maybe they'll find a way around that too. Pumping CO2 underground on the other hand, I'm sorry, but I have a hard time accepting that as a reasonable alternative. I'm far too afraid that this is just the same thinking as with nuclear energy. "Oh, we only have to store it for a few millenia and then it'll be perfectly safe." Yeah right, as if that stuff is actually going to stay down there, it's gas for crying out loud. What if a massive cloud of CO2 is released suddenly, due to a massive earthquake or whatnot? It's one thing to prevent CO2 from being created, it's quite another to try and "put it away" until the end of times... I'm not so sure that investing so much money into a project like this is really worth it. At best, it seems to me a temporary solution, with potentially fatal drawbacks later on. We shouldn't be thinking about how to put this stuff away, we need to think about ways of creating less of it! Alternative fuels, more fuel efficient cars (especially in the US!) and nuclear fusion, ESPECIALLY nuclear fusion.