Senators Durbin and Bond Try to Revive FutureGen. By Jim Suhr, AP, May 20, 2008. "Sens. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican, urged Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman in a letter [Monday] to continue funding... FutureGen into March of next year, allowing the next president to consider its fate. The deal between the DOE and [a coalition of nearly a dozen big power and coal companies] is to expire June 15, when the DOE can legally cancel the contract... DOE pulled the plug [on the huge carbon capture and sequestration project] in January, citing [ballooning] costs... [and]... announced this month it is moving in a different direction and expects to spend up to $1.3 billion on multiple clean-coal power plants involving carbon capture and below-ground sequestration. The sites have not been chosen... Undeterred, Durbin and Bond sponsored an amendment to a war-funding measure that cleared the Senate Appropriations Committee on May 15, calling for the DOE to continue funding FutureGen until March [2009]. The full Senate has yet to take up that measure... Durbin... has threatened to block White House appointments to [DOE] unless it reverses course on FutureGen... [He] and others have long suspected politics and President Bush's Texas roots were behind the decision to restructure... Mattoon was chosen over another Illinois site and two in Texas... Anyone wanting to weigh in DOE's blueprint may do so until tomorrow."
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