24 Hours After Touting Clean Coal In SOTU, White House Drops Ambitious Clean Coal Project

[seafan]

24 Hours After Touting Clean Coal In SOTU, White House Drops Ambitious Clean Coal Project

Think Progress
January 30, 2008

President Bush has long touted clean coal technology as a potential solution to global warming. In 2006, he insisted that the United States is “spending quite a bit of money here at the federal level to come up with clean-coal technologies.” During Monday’s State of the Union address, Bush said, “Let us fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions.”

Yet just 24 hours after his SOTU declaration, Bush’s Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman indicated the White House was pulling the plug on the ambitious FutureGen project, a clean coal plant that was touted as “the cleanest fossil fuel fired power plant in the world.”

In a meeting with lawmakers from Illinois — where FutureGen was set to be installed — Bodman “all but drove a stake in” the $1.5 billion project:

(Rep. Timothy) Johnson said Bodman told the group that he planned to disband FutureGen and go “in another direction.” At one point, Johnson and Bodman snapped at each other. At another, U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, a Chicago Democrat, told Bodman that “the first action taken by the president after the State of the Union was a series of broken promises.”

“In 25 years on Capitol Hill, I have never witnessed such a cruel deception,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said, hinting at the administration’s political considerations for the project’s demise. “When the city of Mattoon, Illinois, was chosen over possible locations in Texas, the secretary of energy set out to kill FutureGen.”

Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Robert Sussman notes that companies and governments around the world have committed to supporting FutureGen. “It would be a blow to future international public-private partnerships if the Bush administration were to allow these commitments to languish,” said Sussman.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reports that the Illinois lawmakers intend to appeal the decision to President Bush, and that Durbin “might block nominations to fill two key vacancies at the Energy Department.”

What will our country look like after 12 more months of this curse?


I am afraid to think about it.

[wuushew]

1. clean coal is an oxymoron

no such animal.

[Canuckistanian]

2. It's like a virgin birth - it's theoretical but not seen in nature

Not to mention that it's impossible from a physical and chemical standpoint.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. It's a "carboxymoron".

Chemist's joke.

Yes, we're social studs, why do you ask? :D

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

3. That may be the first sane thing he's done

"clean" coal. Clean as compared to what? Toxic waste?

[hatrack]

4. Wow! Follow-up by reporters!

Apparently they were too busy to follow up on the human-animal hybrids, or the big trip to Mars, or the bases on the Moon, or the special Social Security commission, or the miracle hydrogen car or any of the other horseshit SOTU promises that flexed and squeezed from the Chimp's lips like cat turds for lo these seven years.

But now, suddenly, they've found something to report on. How commendable!`

[Rex]

5. No surprise! George Bush is a sham of a president, just like Dickless

is a sham of a vice-president and their administration is a total sham. It will be remembered as the WORST administration EVER. And hey lurkers...you dug your own graves with this group of crooks and liars.

[eppur_se_muova]

7. Publicly praised by Bu**sh** = Kiss of Death. "Heckuva job, Cleanie!" nt