POWER POLITICS:

POWER POLITICS:FUTUREGEN AND THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION On February 27, 2003 the Department of Energy issued a news release announcing a forward looking plan to address America’s looming energy crisis. It quoted then Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham as saying "FutureGen will be one of the boldest steps our nation has taken toward a pollution-free energy future," said Secretary Abraham. "Knowledge from FutureGen will help turn coal from an environmentally challenging energy resource into an environmentally benign one. The prototype power plant will serve as the test bed for demonstrating the best technologies the world has to offer."The initiative was to create a demonstration plant that would burn coal to create both electricity and hydrogen while sequestering the CO2 released in the process in geological structures far below the earth’s surface. FutureGen would be an alliance between coal interests, power producers and the government. The alliance was to shoulder 26% of the estimated $800 Million cost of the project. Not only American companies would participate in the public-private partnership. Companies with interests in 13 countries would ultimately join the project to develop and operate the prototype plant. In an article published during 2006 in World Energy Magazine Energy Secretary Samuel Wright Bodman said, “In addition to hydrogen and the other renewable energy sources I mentioned, we are also investing heavily in clean-coal technologies, such as integrated gasification and combined cycle. Next year we will spend $54 million on the FutureGen initiative to build a demonstration plant incorporating the most advanced clean-coal burning and carbon-sequestration technologies. I have been encouraged by the display of public enthusiasm for this power project, as seven states have suggested 12 possible sites as the locale for this prototype plant.” The Energy Department spent money evaluating those 12 potential sites and winnowed the list down to four – two in Texas and two in Illinois. The FutureGen Alliance was to select the final site for the demonstration and make its announcement in the following year. Secretary Bodman got himself a new Undersecretary – C.H. “Bud” Albright – who would come on board September 4, 2007 from his position as Republican Chief of Staff of the House Energy Committee.   He held that position from 2005. He before Chairman Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) tapped him to head the committee staff Albright had been Vice President-Federal Relations for Reliant Energy headquartered in Houston, Texas. Reliant had contributed $160,000 to Tom Delay during Albright’s sojourn with the company. The company had also been indicted in April 2004 for manipulating the market during the California energy crisis.At the end of November 2007 the FutureGen Alliance announced that its detailed study of the four proposed sites for its demonstration project had been completed and that it would announce it’s the selection on December 18th.  The Department of Energy told FutureGen not to announce its selection. FutureGen went ahead according to plan and awarded the plant to Mattoon, Illinois.  The site combined easy access to a ready supply of coal; the availability of geologic structures suitable for the sequestration of CO2; and local economic factors that would help control the increasing costs of constructing the demonstration plant. The selected community celebrated but its celebration was short lived.  Before construction of the project could start the Energy Department had to issue its Certificate of Suitability. On November 30th Secretary Bodman had written to Representative Timothy Johnson telling him that FutureGen was on track and that the necessary certificate would be issued before the year ended. Immediately after the selection of Mattoon had been made public the Department of Energy reneged on Secretary Bodman’s pledged to the Republican congressman. Under Secretary Albright expressed concern with the increase in estimated construction costs that had been experienced in the five years since the Bush Administration had announced the FutureGen Initiative in the spring of 2003. On Reliant’s web-site the company says, “Reliant Energy owns or operates approximately 16,000 MW of generating capacity in 9 states. Our ongoing environmental program at these stations ensures that operations at these sites meet or exceed federal, state or local regulations that govern air emissions to the atmosphere, wastewater discharges to surface waters or groundwater, or industrial waste disposal at offsite or onsite permitted disposal sites.” One of those generating plants is located on Lake Mattoon in Illinois and has been under increasing pressure from the City of Mattoon and the Illinois EPA to address neglected water and air pollution issues at its Illinois plant. The new 275 megawatt FutureGen plant would be competing directly with Reliant for the Midwest market had it gone on line as scheduled in 2010. In January 2008 Under Secretary BudAlbright had been in office just six months when he pulled the plug on the FutureGen project, citing increased costs as the rationale. He told FutureGen stakeholders that the Department of Energy was not going to build “Disneyland in some Illinois swamp.”   It is inconceivable that he did not know that the “Illinois swamp” he was talking about was just down the road from Reliant Energy’s Mattoon power plant.   Jewitt, Texas was one of the four finalists for the FutureGen project. Jewitt is located in Republican Congressman Joe Barton’s district. Barton was Chairman of the House Energy Committee. It was he who hired Albright away from Reliant and brought him to Washington as Barton’s Chief of Staff. Barton lobbied hard for Jewitt as the site for FutureGen, According to Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois Albright pulled the plug on the project after numerous conversations with Rep. Barton. Barton acknowledged having the conversations but said he was only trying to keep the project alive. In cancelling the FutureGen project Albright said that the department was restructuring the project to fund commercial power plants that would use the integrated carbon capture technology that FutureGen was designed to develop, refine, and demonstrate. The money that would have been spent on the Mattoon, Illinois demonstration plant would be parceled out to existing commercial power companies. Testifying April 15, 2008 before the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee Albright said, “The goal of our restructured FutureGen program remains the same as the original FutureGen approach announced in 2003: to maximize our national investment in clean coal research by demonstrating cutting-edge system integration of CCS technologies. The difference is that under the restructured program, our plan, with current cost estimates, is to support not just a single less-than-commercial-scale R&D testing laboratory, but rather to provide funding for commercial demonstration of integrated advanced carbon capture and storage technologies. Unlike the original approach, the new plants will operate commercially from the start and will provide a significant amount of electricity to our Nation’s electric grid. This will help meet the Nation’s rapidly growing demand for energy, while also demonstrating the commercial viability of permanently and safely storing carbon dioxide deep underground. These commercial plants will be able to be replicated around the world. The power sector will be able to plan and to finance new state-of-the-art coal facilities based upon cutting-edge system integration of CCS technologies at commercial plants under the restructured FutureGen program.”  Albright did not tell the Committee that the “restructured” FutureGen abandoned the international alliance underlying the project.  The FutureGen Alliance includes companies with mining and power generation interests in South Africa, Indonesia, Australia, Britain, Columbia, and other nations in Europe and Asia. China gets 70% of its power from coal burning plants. With its demand for electric power growing exponentially China is opening a new coal burning plant each week.  The US produces fully 25% of the world’s CO2 emissions. China is expected to surpass the US total in 2010. China Huenaneg Group is the largest coal based power generator in the People’s Republic of China. Huenaneg Group’s involvement in the FutureGen Alliance promised the application of clean coal technologies to the rapidly growing Chinese energy sector and its greenhouse gas emissions. That potential is lost in the restructured FutureGen project. Instead of providing funding for development and demonstration of new carbon sequestration techniques with a global reach Albright’s restructured FutureGen would fund diverse projects at existing commercial power plants restricting the benefits to domestic commercial power companies.  A second important feature of the original FutureGen demonstration project configuration was the production of hydrogen from coal. Albright’s new configuration does not include economic production of hydrogen as a by-product of the clean coal process. Hydrogen produced from coal might have economically provided a viable clean burning alternative fuel to gasoline and diesel to power transportation needs without contributing to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We already have the proven technology to use hydrogen as an energy source. We have been using hydrogen fuel cells to provide in-flight power for our space program since Apollo One. We know how to use it as a clean transportation fuel. All we lack is a widely available economic source of the fuel.  On June 13, 2008, after 5 years and at least $40 Million in federal Taxpayer Dollars, the Energy Department notified the 13 companies of the FutureGen Alliance that it was terminating the cooperative agreement under which the alliance had operated since Secretary Abrahams announced the program in February 2003. All that is left to do, according to the letter the companies received, is for FutureGen to file financial reports and to reveal to the government the information and technologies that the program had developed thus far. Illinois politicians on both sides of the aisle point to the timing of the announcement that FutureGen was dead, coming as it did immediately following the Alliance announcement Mattoon had won the demonstration plant, and suggest that the decision was purely political.  Had Jewitt or Odessa, Texas received the nod the program would be very much alive, their reasoning goes. Albright’s tie to Rep. Barton in whose district is the Jewitt site gives credence to that Texas vs. Illinois theory; the real answer is not as simple as Red State Texas vs. Blue State Illinois. To find the real answer we have to follow Deep Throat’s advice to Woodward and Bernstein, “Follow the money,”  In the original FutureGen configuration, where was the 74% Federal contribution to go?  A more instructive inquiry is where was the money not to go? It was not headed for existing power generators like Reliant – interests whose significant contributions to the Republican side of the aisle had purchased for its lobbyists access to the seats of power. It was not headed to Big Oil whose appetite for record profits has been reflected in contributions to the RNC. The money was going to a consortium of international power providers who would have been unable to legally make political contributions. Where does the money go in the reconfigured project? Answer that question and you follow the money. That’s power politics.