If the United States is serious about developing domestic energy sources while also capping climate-changing greenhouse gases, Illinois is in a key position on both sides of the equation.
Why? Coal. Illinois has lots of coal. So much coal that nearly two-thirds of the state overlies coal deposits. The state's 38 billion tons of reserves represent a 250-year supply and an eighth of the national reserves, according to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity's Office of Coal Development.
"No single region has as much at stake as Illinois," said Michael Murphy, the office's manager of coal programs and site manager for the proposed FutureGen clean coal demonstration project at Mattoon. "No state has more to gain."
Nearly half of the nation's electricity comes from coal. Coal's abundant availability in vast swaths of America, including central and southern Illinois, Indiana and western Kentucky, likely makes it a key energy resource for decades to come.
Yet national and international reliance on coal, and the outlook for Illinois' role in domestic energy independence, runs headlong into efforts to arrest what some say could be catastrophic climate change.
To that end, the state and the Illinois congressional delegation is working on multiple fronts to tame coal's contributions to global warming. They are betting on new technology to capture harmful carbon dioxide while unleashing coal's energy for consumers of electricity, and potentially, transportation fuels.
The push is urgent. Coal-fired power plants are the No. 1 contributor in the United States to carbon dioxide emissions, the prime culprit in global warming. At 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, coal plants outrank automobile, which spew about 1.5 billion tons.
Environmental groups have been sounding the alarm about the expansion of coal-fired electricity generation and the resulting increases in carbon dioxide emissions. The Sierra Club, for one, wants Washington to put more money into energy efficiency and alternative sources, including wind, solar and geothermal, while continuing to explore clean coal technology.
"Sierra Club believes there are clean energy sources available now," said Becki Clayborn, regional representative of the Sierra Club Coal Campaign. Regarding clean coal technology, she said, "we think that's a ways off, it's not here now. It doesn't hurt to study it."
Illinois could see a huge growth in coal production and jobs if the promise of clean coal usage is achieved. Statewide coal production last year of about 32 million tons marks a level well off of historical highs: companies mined more than 89 million tons in the state in 1918 and as recently as 1991 mined more than 60 million tons.
Solving the contradiction coal presents has led Illinois to invest heavily in research and development and make a concerted effort to win the $1.8 billion FutureGen project, which was to build a "zero emissions" coal fired electricity demonstration plant. The goal of the project is to convert the coal to a gas, then capture the carbon dioxide and pump it into the ground for permanent sequestration.
The technology is not exactly new. Pumping carbon dioxide underground has been used in oil fields to force crude out of porous formations, and the integrated gasification combined cycle, or IGCC, process is already up and running, with IGCC plants in Indiana and Florida, and two more in Europe.
FutureGen would use both gasification and sequestration technology at a power plant to make electricity without adding to greenhouse gases. Whether the plant will be built is unknown, however.
The FutureGen Alliance of 13 coal companies and power utilities last year chose Mattoon to host the project, but in January the Department of Energy canceled its support based on cost concerns.
DOE officials said the department would revise its clean coal program to fund smaller carbon capture projects. The state and the Illinois delegation in Washington have refused to accept the decision as final, however, and want to revive the Mattoon plan when the next administration takes office in January.
This summer, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., sought to keep the project going through a $134 million earmark he inserted into an appropriations bill, but the money was shelved when Congress was unable to pass most new spending bills and chose to extend the 2008 federal budget into the new year.
Still, if Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., wins the presidential election over Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Illinois bakers will have a ready-made ally in someone who supported the project in the Senate.
The state continues to see gasification and sequestration as critical to the future of the Illinois coal industry.
"Our slogan is, if you want to talk about gasification, you should talk to Illinois first," said Murphy.
Murphy noted that the state has sunk about $4 million into coal research and development, "arguably the most aggressive state program," he added, and that the state is focused on developing gasification to bring coal into carbon emissions limits. "Gasification is, at the least, a very, very large part of the future, if not the entire future for coal in Illinois," he said.
To the state, FutureGen brings together all of its efforts to make state a leader in clean coal technology and bring new coal business to Illinois.
"To fully remove the shackles from the Illinois coal industry is going to require some advances in technology to deal with greenhouse gases and global warming," Murphy said. "We, meaning anybody who is involved in coal in this administration in Illinois, has believed that for some time. It's a question of how and when, and not if."
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