With all the publicity it has generated over the years, it almost seems impossible that officials in Washington still have not approved the "clean coal" plant known as FutureGen. This month, however, the waiting games ends. The Department of Energy (DoE) is expected to announce sometime in mid-February whether or not they are moving ahead with plans to build the nation's first commercial-scale power plant equipped with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. If it works as advertised -- and that's a big if  --  the facility could generate 275 megawatts of electricity by 2020 (enough to power about 150,000 homes) and capture 90 percent of its carbon emissions.

For supporters of this clean coal project, it's been a long and bumpy road. President George Bush launched a national competition to find a site suitable for the plant way back in 2003. To spearhead the campaign, the DoE promised $1 billion over 10 years in federal subsidies to the winner, which was no small sum coming from an administration that did not prioritize energy innovation. Illinois officials thought the southeastern city Mattoon was a logical fit; utilities already stored natural gas in the area's thick sandstone reservoirs and local support for economic development was strong and bipartisan. In March 2006, Mattoon submitted a blueprint for FutureGen, one of 22 sites to do so. State and federal lawmakers and private investors hoping to cash in early on the developing technology quickly backed the bid. The Blagojevich administration even launched a furious lobbying campaign on the part of Mattoon, spending more than $450,000 to hire a Washington D.C. firm to push for the project in the capital. It paid off, as a coalition of energy companies called the FutureGen Alliance officially approved Illinois's application in late 2007.

The momentum came to a screeching halt just weeks later, though. Following President Bush's final State of the Union address, in which he touted the promise of clean coal, the DoE voiced concerns over cost estimates -- then set at $1.8 billion -- and pulled the plug entirely. This stunned Blagojevich and the FutureGen Alliance, which had shepherded Mattoon through the application process and agreed to raise private capital for its construction.

For months, no progress was made. But federal report by the Government Accountability Office indicating that accounting errors overestimated the cost by $500 million breathed some life back into the project. When the new administration swept into town, Obama's Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu salvaged it from the scrap heap, promising $1 billion in funds via the federal stimulus package. While some funders have dropped out of the Alliance, they are still expected to make large contributions to the project, likely in the $400 million to $600 million range. (Aside from the lobbying fees, the state has not provided financial support.) Over the weekend, Illinois utility giant Exelon agreed to support the bid as well, which could limit concerns that energy firms were backing away from the investment because of the struggling economy. After almost seven years of negotiations, all the ducks finally seem to be in a row.

That the project is so close to getting off the ground has some environmental activists at both the state and national level worried. They fear that the government is going to invest too many resources into CCS plants, both in direct funding and increased incentives, before the technology is proven to be scaleable. (Grist's David Roberts has a good primer on the topic here.) For example, there’s no clear consensus yet on how much retrofitting existing coal plants with CCS capabilities -- or even building new plants altogether -- really costs. The government also has to run broad environmental studies into what areas of the country have the geological capacity to store emissions underground. The uncertainty affects the investment patterns of energy companies, which have so far refused to spend hardly any of their own money on CCS development.

Then there is the issue of price. If carbon is not regulated effectively, (and the odds of that happening this year grow slimmer by the day), the additional costs associated with CCS compared to cheap and dirty coal will make it economically uncompetitive, no matter how well the plant's engineering operates.

But as long as FutureGen is fully understood to be experimental, investing $1 billion to see if it's possible to capture emissions might be worth the cost. After all, half of the state's electricity is still supplied by the black rock. That demand will diminish once clean and renewable energy sources begin to flourish, but it will remain steady in the near future. Furthermore, this specific project has a lot of built-in advantages. The Illinois Sierra Club's Jack Darin points out that the size of FutureGen is only moderate, it's a single plant (and not part of a large fleet), and additional pipelines don't need to be constructed to supply it with enough energy to operate. "This technology," he tells us, "will succeed or fail on its own merit."

Darin did express one legitimate concern. Illinois lawmakers are considering a proposal that would require the state to purchase all electricity produced at the proposed FutureGen plant. Sponsors of the legislation hope that by locking in a buyer for FutureGen's product, the plant will be able to cover its operating costs, which is of interest to the DoE selection committee. The FutureGen Alliance is lobbying hard for consideration. But they've given no indication how much the deal would cost taxpayers. (Ed note: Ronald Swager points out in comments that the state has already spent money, through its Coal Development Office, on competitiveness grants (PDF) and support for environmental studies, a point we neglected in our original report.) And as mentioned above, it is still an open question whether the energy produced will really be "clean."

Making a long-term commitment to CCS before the technology is proven to work is just the type of deal the cash-strapped state should avoid.