Greener power plant taking too long?

Federal efforts to design a non-polluting coal-fired power plant were criticized Sunday for taking too long.

The discussion came during the National Governors Association's first "field hearing" on energy, held at the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, described hearings by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, of which he is a member.

The federal Department of Energy is working on what it calls "the FutureGen Project" to develop a coal-burning power plant, an official said during a hearing, according to Matheson.

Earlier, President Bush said the effort is a demonstration project to create the first coal-based, zero-emissions electricity and hydrogen plant. According to a DOE Web site, the plant would capture and sequester the carbon produced and produce electricity and hydrogen from coal. By sequestration, the DOE envisions placing waste carbon dioxide in geological settings or using it to improve petroleum recovery from oil fields.

FutureGen, Matheson said, is a "10-year, billion-dollar effort," and the demonstration plant would produce 275 megawatts of electricity.

"DOE estimates the technology will not be ready for widespread deployment — at least they testified before our committee and told us this — until the year 2045," Matheson said.

He added that a witness from the administration "did indicate that if greater funding were put in year after year to develop these technologies ... it could happen sooner than 2045." Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer responded that the West has "somewhere around $5 trillion worth of coal in the ground. We have a 300-year supply of coal we can make liquid fuels out of or we could gasify and create electricity."

Schweitzer said the United States does not have an energy shortage.

"We have a shortage of research and development to determine where we're going to pump that carbon dioxide and how long we can store it."

Apparently referring to the yearly budget for the FutureGen Project, he said, "This is a joke, $200 million to study carbon sequestration."

He asked when Congress would recognize the mistake of sending $240 billion "to dictators overseas vs. about $15 billion to develop carbon sequestration during the next 10 years."

"2045 is not realistic for clean coal technology," Schweitzer added. "Heaven help us if the Department of Energy is correct."

Matheson said he agreed with everything that Schweitzer had said. "That's why I mentioned the 2045 date because I thought that was alarming," he said.