Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
12/5/2014
A lawsuit challenging the Illinois Commerce Commission’s authority to require other state utilities to foot some of the bill for the costly FutureGen 2.0 carbon capture and storage project will come before the Illinois Supreme Court, the court announced early this week. This appeal, as well as an appeal threatened by the Sierra Club regarding a recent court decision made in favor of FutureGen concerning the project’s air permit, could prove detrimental to progress on the project. “Two parties have stated their intent to appeal lower court decisions that were favorable to the FutureGen project. When the appeals are officially filed, they will unquestionably delay a planned ramp-up in ongoing construction activities and hamper Illinois job creation. The University of Illinois estimates the economic benefits of FutureGen to be $12 billion. These economic benefits are put at risk by these appeals,” FutureGen Alliance CEO Ken Humphreys told GHG Monitor in a written statement.
The Illinois Competitive Energy Association, an Illinois-based trade association of competitive energy suppliers, has challenged a sourcing agreement approved by the Illinois Commerce Commission in late 2012. According to ICC documents regarding FutureGen, “the sourcing agreement requires the state’s electric utilities to purchase electricity from FutureGen 2.0 for 20 years, with the utilities then permitted to collect costs for the project on a pro rata basis from alternative retail electric suppliers.” A state appellate court had ruled in favor of the FutureGen 2.0 sourcing agreement in July in a 2-1 decision finding that “the approach adopted by the Commission in the instant case was within its statutory authority and was a cost-effective alternative to administering the nearly 70 individual sourcing agreements that would result from requiring each alternative retail electric supplier to have its own agreement.”
The FutureGen 2.0 project, once completed, will be a 200 MW oxy-combustion retrofit to unit 4 at Ameren Energy Resource’s coal-fired power plant in Meredosia, Ill. Construction is due to start later this year with the plant becoming operational in 2017. The project, expected to cost at a total of $1.65 billion, is funded in part with $1 billion awarded in 2010 from the Recovery Act. The project’s timeline remains precarious as the Recovery Act funding has a spending deadline of September 2015. “The ultimate schedule impact of the two appeals will depend upon the duration of the court proceedings,” Humphreys said.
