The fortunes of FutureGen, the $1.8 billion clean-coal demonstration plant canceled more than a year ago by the Bush administration, could be changing—if the project can shake off being labeled “the biggest earmark in history.” The Senate-passed $838-billion economic stimulus bill includes what appeared to be a thinly disguised earmark of $2 billion for the near-zero-emissions project. It was to have been built at a site in Mattoon, Illinois, but in January 2008 Samuel Bodman, then US Department of Energy secretary, pulled the plug (see Physics Today, September 2008, page 26). Shortly after inauguration day, a group of six Midwest senators, led by Illinois Democrats Richard Durbin and Roland Burris, wrote to DOE Secretary Steven Chu, urging him to restart FutureGen, which would demonstrate carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology on a commercial scale. Specifically, the lawmakers asked Chu to formalize the project’s environmental impact statement, which had...

You do not currently have access to this content.