For Release: Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Contact: David Gillies: 202-225-5661

SHIMKUS, JOHNSON, COSTELLO PRAISE CHOICE OF MATTOON FOR FUTUREGEN FACILITY

Washington - Congressmen John Shimkus (R, Illinois-19), Jerry Costello (D, Illinois-12), and Timothy Johnson (R, Illinois-15) issued the following statements after Mattoon, Illinois, was announced as the site of the FutureGen facility.
 
"I am thrilled that the hard work of the Mattoon community, State of Illinois, and our Congressional delegation has paid off.  FutureGen will be a benefit to central Illinois, to the coal industry, to our nation's energy future, and to the world,” Shimkus stated.  “I know that we must now turn to focusing on keeping FutureGen funded at the necessary levels for construction and then future operations.  There is still much work ahead, but we can celebrate this victory for the moment."

“We finally got the big one,” said Johnson. “I can’t say enough about the extraordinary effort put forth to make this happen. We started working toward this end more than five years ago. Reaching this point required the participation of people at all levels of government, the scientific community and the good will and enthusiasm of scores of caring citizens in Mattoon and Tuscola. It was truly a collegial effort in which Illinois put forth its best effort and the best effort worked. We showed we could overcome partisanship at every level of government on behalf of a goal that is not only in our self-interest, but in the nation’s interest.”

“We could not be happier that almost five years of determined work has landed FutureGen in Illinois,” added Costello. “While FutureGen would be good for our coal industry no matter where it was located, it was our goal all along to locate the facility in Illinois to get the maximum economic benefit for our workers. Moreover, Illinois is a state with a rich coal history and the geography, resources, and leadership to make FutureGen successful. I started working on this outcome as soon as President Bush announced the project in February 2003. We held our first roundtable in July of that year and have been working it ever since. This has been a great team effort, and I want to thank all of my colleagues at the federal, state and local levels for their contributions.”
 
The Illinois congressional delegation has pushed the message that Illinois is the perfect site for the facility since President Bush announced the FutureGen project in February 2003. The geology of the region is well suited to the carbon-trapping technology to be developed, and 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 BTUs than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

The FutureGen Alliance (www.futuregenalliance.org) “is a public-private partnership to design, build, and operate the world's first coal-fueled, near-zero emissions power plant... The commercial-scale plant will prove the technical and economic feasibility of producing low-cost electricity and hydrogen from coal while nearly eliminating emissions. It will also support testing and commercialization of technologies focused on generating clean power, capturing and permanently storing carbon dioxide, and producing hydrogen.”

The U.S. Department of Energy is a major financial partner in the FutureGen Alliance.
The final four sites being considered were Mattoon and Tuscola, Illinois, and Odessa and Jewett, Texas.

More information on the Mattoon site: The Mattoon Site consists of 444 acres in Mattoon Township, Coles County, Illinois. Most of the site is currently used for agricultural purposes. The site has rail access immediately adjacent to the northeast site boundary, and has adjacent 138 kV power lines and a 345 kV substation 16 miles away. The site proposers intend to use the combined effluent from the municipal wastewater treatment plants in Mattoon, Illinois, and Charleston, Illinois, for cooling water. A natural gas pipeline is less than one-half mile away. The CO2 injection well for the Mattoon site is proposed to be on the site, therefore, no CO2 corridor is necessary.

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