US Governor Plays 15-Year, $20 Million Dollar “Texas Hold ‘Em” Bet On Coal-To-Liquids Plant
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 02. 6.07
As reported in the Weatherford Texas Democrat, “Texas has one-upped the state of Illinois again in the battle to win FutureGen, the U.S. Department of Energy’s experimental mega-power plant…Gov. Rick Perry announced a $20 million funding commitment Monday, which significantly boosts Texas’ effort to win the federal gasification and carbon capture demonstration project”. Governor Perry has upped the ante against US Senator Barack Obama and his home State of Illinois, whose parallel interest in having the “FutureGen” we mentioned in a previous post. Apparently, the C02 captured from the prospective Texas FutureGen plant emissions would be sold for use in oil well injection -- to increase Texas oil production, presumably.
Our favorite quote from the article:-“As the global debate surrounding coal-fueled power plant emissions escalates, no other state in the nation is more cognizant of these issues than Texas.”
And our second favorite quote:- “Because of the tremendous work and talent our state has devoted to the FutureGen pursuit, Texas is positioned as a premiere authority in clean coal technology,” Who’d have thought it?
The entire article is certainly worth reading. You’ll find it here.
Image credit: We Do It All Vegas.
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- Score One For the Stupid Fuel: Ohio Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Plant Gets Final Permitting
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Texas played harball to get the Superconducting Supercollider, but after they did, the site was found to be unbuildable, because of FIRE ANTS ! The entire project was scrapped, after millions of preliminary dollars being spent. Let's hope the spadework on this bid approaches a minimum level of competence.
Ok so maybe I'm just looking for this, but it seems that whenever Texas gets mention on here, people act like its that one cousin...who's kinda slow....pulling a fast one and catching you off guard. Does everyone have that low of a expection for Texas?
=== authors' response follows ===
Speaking only for myself, because TX is running low on natural gas and oil, and coal and wind are the remaining best options, I'd be glad to see them get the CTL project...and more wind power incentives too. But CTL remains a long shot and should not be viewed as somehow canceling the more near term negatives of the currently proposed coal fired plants, which would lack the low emission qualities of CTL.
Actually Rob, Bill Clinton pulled funding for the Supercollider project in texas after 2 billion (out of a projected 8.5 billion dollers) had already been spent on the project!
here's a great article about it.
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=502
I'm still pretty upset over Superconducting Supercollider project getting shut down. It would have been an amazing tool for science and to end it after 2 billion dollars had already been spent. What a sad mistake that was.
And it wasn't closed because of Ants. Well not that I've ever heard of and I live like 30+ miles from where it was going to be built.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Supercollider
Thanks Aaron, I intended to write that in my above post too.
According to the link to the article I attached in my previous post, it seems like funding was cancelled because it was going WAY over budget and the projected total cost kept going up and up.
It really is too bad though, it really would have pushed technological innovation in the U.S.