The Energy Department has unveiled its blueprint for spending up to 1.3 billion dollars to develop a non-polluting, coal-fired power plant.
The idea is to capture carbon emissions from such plants and permanently store them underground.
Under a plan announced Wednesday, the project known as FutureGen would go not to a single plant, but to several smaller projects around the country. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin has vowed to derail FutureGen after the department scuttled a project in Mattoon, Illinois, because the cost had ballooned to nearly double the original price tag.
An Energy Department official says the Illinois town is out of the picture unless a developer builds a power plant there and applies to partner with the Energy Department.