FutureGen in trouble: I rest my case
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008Now isn’t this timely. Reuters is reporting that the U.S. Department of Energy is getting cold feet with its much-touted FutureGen clean coal project, largely because the $900 million project pricetag has ballooned to $1.8 billion, and climbing. Seems the U.S. government, which had promised to fund 75 per cent of the public-private initiative, is having second thoughts because Energy Secretary Sam Bodman isn’t happy about the cost overruns so far.
Here’s a message for you Sammy: Get used to it.
Clean coal. Carbon capture and sequestration. Nuclear. It might lead us to energy independence, but it will come at a price. Half measures won’t get us there, and neither will promises and big talk. Aren’t conservation and renewables looking good at this point?
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
