UPDATE: AEP, Southern Leave Futuregen 'Clean-Coal' Project
2009年6月26日 - 6:17AM
Dow Jones News
American Electric Power Co. (AEP) and Southern Co. (SO) are
pulling out of Futuregen, a U.S. government-backed project to
capture and store the greenhouse-gas emissions from a coal-fired
power plant, the companies' top executives said Thursday.
The companies, two of the biggest coal-burning utilities in the
U.S., are exiting the Futuregen Alliance just weeks after it won
renewed support from the federal government. The Obama
administration earlier this month all but guaranteed almost $1.1
billion for the project, to be based in Mattoon, Ill., reviving a
project that had suffered a major setback in early 2008 when the
Bush administration backed out of funding plans after costs almost
doubled. The companies' departure from the alliance was reported
earlier by Bloomberg News.
The project envisions the building of a power plant that will
capture and permanently store underground 60% of the carbon-dioxide
emitted in combustion. This is down from the original aim to
capture 90% of the plant's CO2 emissions. The plant would test the
technology on a commercial level, a critical step in the face of
likely federal climate change legislation that would limit
greenhouse gas emissions.
"We've moved onto other projects," Southern Chief Executive
David Ratcliffe said on the sidelines of the Edison Electric
Institute conference in San Francisco. He said he told Energy
Secretary Steven Chu that "I've had to devote my resources to
other, more tangible projects that are moving faster," adding he
still strongly supports the Futuregen project and Southern would
share information with developers.
Southern will begin in 2011 capturing a fraction of the CO2 from
its 2,525-megawatt Barry plant near Mobile, Ala., in a partnership
with the Department of Energy and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.
(7011.TO). Southern will also manage and operate the Department of
Energy's new National Carbon Capture Center near Wilsonville, Ala.,
where carbon-capture technologies will be developed. In addition,
Southern unit Mississippi Power in January filed plans to build a
582-megawatt plant that would be fueled with gas derived from coal,
with carbon-capture capability.
AEP said it would be pulling out of Futuregen on July 1. Chief
Executive Mike Morris said AEP was going to devote its resources to
other sequestration projects, including a plant in West Virginia.
The company will start in September to test CO2 capture-and-storage
technology at the coal-fired Mountaineer plant in New Haven, W.Va.,
injecting up to 165,000 metric tons of CO2 a year into the
ground.
"It's going to happen a whole lot sooner than Futuregen," Morris
said on the sidelines of the conference. He added, however, that he
still supports Futuregen, noting the alliance's CEO, Michael Mudd,
comes from AEP and AEP engineers would continue working on the
Illinois project.
"AEP's decision to withdraw from the FutureGen Alliance is a
financial decision and not an indication that the company does not
consider FutureGen a worthwhile project," AEP spokesman Pat Hemlepp
said in an email.
The remaining members of the alliance include U.S. and overseas
coal companies, including Consol Energy Inc. (CNX), Peabody Energy
Corp. (BTU) and BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP), and utilities E.on AG
(EOAN.XE) and China Huaneng Group.
-By Mark Peters and Cassandra Sweet, Dow Jones Newswires;
212-416-2457; mark.peters@dowjones.com
(Christine Buurma in New York contributed to this report.)