For Release: Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Contact: David Gillies (Costello): (202) 225-5661
               Steve Tomaszewski (Shimkus): (618) 344-3065

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, FUTUREGEN ALLIANCE FORMALLY ADOPT AGREEMENT TO BUILD STATE-OF-THE-ART CLEAN COAL POWER PLANT

Washington -U.S. Congressmen Jerry Costello (D-IL) and John Shimkus (R-IL) today applauded the formal signing of the agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy and the FutureGen Industrial Alliance to build FutureGen, a 275-megawatt prototype power plant with emissions equal to those of natural gas.  Costello and Shimkus have led the effort in Congress to bring the project to fruition and locate it in Southern Illinois. 

President Bush proposed building FutureGen in February 2003. The Industrial Alliance plans to issue a site selection solicitation in early 2006, to develop a short list of the most qualified candidate sites by mid-2006, and to make a final site selection in mid to late 2007.  FutureGen will initiate operations around 2012 and virtually every aspect of the prototype plant will be based on cutting-edge technology. 

"Today's action is another step toward completing this project, which is so important for the future of clean coal technology and the Illinois coal industry," said Costello.  "While we were hoping to have site selection completed by the end of 2006, this is a reasonable timeframe and we will continue to work with the Department of Energy and the Alliance to move the process as quickly as possible."

"The contract with the Alliance is another important step toward a location decision, which we hope will be Southern Illinois," Shimkus noted.  "This project also has the overwhelming support of mayors and county boards throughout Southern Illinois, which indicates that Southern Illinois is a willing host for this mine and generation plant."

Costello and Shimkus believe that Southern Illinois is the perfect place to locate the new plant. The region is rich in high-sulfur coal reserves and the Coal Center at SIUC is located there.  In addition, the geology of the region is well suited to the carbon-trapping technology to be developed.  Illinois is home to oil and gas reserves and deep saline aquifers that can permanently sequester carbon dioxide.

Coal underlies 65 percent of the state's surface and the Illinois coal industry annually produces approximately 35 million tons of coal and generates more than $1 billion in gross revenues. Currently, recoverable coal reserves in the state of Illinois amount to more than 30 billion tons. Illinois has almost one-eighth of the coal reserves in the United States and one-quarter of the nation's bituminous coal reserves. Illinois' coal reserves contain more BTU's than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

###