Department of Energy January 22, 2014 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE) announces its decision to provide financial assistance to the FutureGen Industrial Alliance (the Alliance) for its FutureGen 2.0 Project. DOE prepared an environmental impact statement (EIS) (DOE/EIS-0460) to evaluate the potential environmental impacts associated with DOE's proposed action of providing approximately $1 billion of financial assistance for the project (the majority of which was appropriated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)) through cooperative agreements with the Alliance. The EIS evaluated the potential impacts associated with construction and operation of the proposed FutureGen 2.0 Project, which is a public-private partnership formed for the purpose of developing the world's first commercial- scale, oxy-combustion electric generation project integrated with carbon capture and geologic storage. The Alliance, cooperating with Ameren Energy Resources (Ameren), would upgrade one unit in a power plant currently owned by Ameren near Meredosia, Illinois. The repowered unit would include oxy-combustion and carbon capture technologies designed to capture at least 90 percent of its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions during steady-state operation and reduce other emissions to near zero. The captured CO2 would be transported through an approximately 30-mile pipeline to wells where it would be injected approximately 4,000 feet below ground into a geologic saline formation for permanent storage. The project would be designed to capture, transport, and inject approximately 1.2 million tons (1.1 million metric tons) of CO2 annually, and up to a total of 24 million tons (22 million metric tons) over approximately 20 years. The Alliance would also construct and operate visitor, research, and training facilities related to carbon capture and storage in the vicinity of Jacksonville, Illinois. The DOE-funded demonstration period would last for 56 months from the start of operations (approximately 2017) through 2022.