Publication

This report examines the development of FutureGen, the Bush administration’s signature clean coal power initiative. As initially conceived, FutureGen would have been the world’s first coal-fired power plant to integrate carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) with integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technologies. However, the project was discontinued in 2008 and only taken up again by the Obama administration in 2010, when it was restructured. According to the author, FutureGen would address congressional concerns in balancing out the competing national aims of fostering low-cost, domestic energy sources like coal against the mitigating effects of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere.