It's a start...

If I were Illinois & Texas, and somebody said they were going to spend $1.5B in my state, I'd probably fight for it also :-)

Of course, if the US said "We've got $1B to build a pyramid", people wouldn't turn it away.

-John Mashey

The crux then becomes to ask the question: why are we doing this - or more broadly, does it meet some bigger policy purpose.  To the best I can tell, there are three reasons, amply discussed elsewhere on Grist:

1. Because we're concerned about GHG emissions.
   
2. Because we believe that coal is so cheap as to be an inevitable part of our energy future.
   
3. Because hydrogen will be a part of our energy future.

Which brings us to the second question: is coal really so cheap?  At $6500/kW, this is something like 18 cents/kWh delivered.  That's not only not cheap, it's absurdly expensive. So expensive that if it were built, it would create a huge economic incentive to build lots of more cost effective GHG abatement projects, from negative cost efficiency to ~10 - 11 cent delivered wind.  Which raises the obvious question of "why not do those first?"  I've got a hard time personally not concluding tha the answer is because there's no fiscal accountability on spending DOE money.  If I was in Vegas and was able to gamble with other people's money, I'd put a lot on 17 red on the roulette wheel.  If I win, I'm a hero, and if I lose, I'll drown my sorrows in free drinks at the Celine Dion concert.  How is this project different?

So then we're left with hydrogen.  Perhaps that justifies the whole thing.  Let's look: last time I checked, the biggest market for hydrogen was margarine production.  After that, NASA (and petroleum refineries, who use it to strip out sulfur).  So let's stick with the gambling with other people's money scenario.  Would you put up $1.8 billion on the odds that we're going to see growth in the number of astronauts eating Parkay? And is that scenario more or less likely than that by the time this plant is built, there's going to be some other growth industry for hydrogen (e.g., a nationwide fueling infrastructure and hydrogen fueled vehicles that finally crack the storage problem) to justify the production.  

The word boondoggle comes to mind.  But "maddeningly stupid" was all that made it onto the tape!

Hydrogen -
Hydrogen isn't a final product (although it could be drawn off).  IGCC means Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle.  The gasification process produces a "Syngas" consisting of hydrogen and carbon monoxide.  The CO is then reacted with water to make additional hydrogen.  The hydrogen is burned to spin a gas turbine.  Waste heat from the exhaust is captured by a heat exchanger and runs a low-pressure steam turbine.   [combined cycle gas & steam turbines]

It is an efficient process, even after the energy used to separate the gases is included.

A big advantage of the process is that by converting all fuel into gases, it is easier to cleanup unwanted by-products.  They  expect to capture all the CO2, 99% of Sulfur and 90% of mercury.  Also, instead of loose, useless fly ash, it makes a glassy slag that is strong enough to use in pavement or construction.    

And then remember that only those costs are estimates, in an industry that has a long history of cost overruns.  And be sure to add to it the $1300/kW (national average) for transmission and distribution capacity, plus the need to add 20 - 30% additional upstream capacity to serve a kW of downstream load due to ~10% line losses and ~20% reserve margin requirements.  All of those numbers have to be factored in to get to delivered costs of electricity, as opposed to the generation at the power plant calculated in the Livermore data (albeit on wildly deflated capex numbers) - because it's the retail prices that ultimately matter.

I suppose a part of the discrepancy can be chalked up to the fact that the paper was written in 2003, but in any event, the numbers just don't work.  Saying that you can make 5 cent power from $1700/kW coal is like saying you can travel across country for free using nothing more than a lemon, 1 cup of crushed ice and a teleporter.

Perhaps we should set McGyver loose on FutureGen!

grist.org

Can anyone explain why this survey was not conducted before the site was chosen?  I assume this will inform decisions about CO2 injections.  

The 'bonkers' data are the calculations done by steam engineers for every power plant built in the last 80 years.  Steam tables, pressure drops, inlet temperatures, all to calculate efficiencies.  Typically, when a plant is finished, tests must prove the system meets guaranteed efficiencies, or the final payment will be reduced per the contract.  So it is safe to say- the numbers are solid and the result of a proven process.

Efficiencies don't change, regardless of construction costs.  And that study is for a 400 MW unit rather than the 275 MW station being built.

DOE & fossil energy producers have shot themselves in the foot with the timing.  They had no urgency to build anything with Bush stalling and Congress passive for 6 years.  They waited for them to make things more friendly, delay pollution restrictions, and avoid new construction that would require tighter emission standards.  

Now AGW, the 'other problem,' comes at them hard and they aren't ready.  They should have gotten lower bids during a business lull, now they must pay top dollar.  As a result, the plant is smaller than previously proposals and some reports suggest it won't contain everything in the earlier versions.

The 5 - 6 cent /KWe estimate is the theoretical production cost from a mature technology.  If the concept works, the costs would decline for additional plants.    

Note also that I'm not questioning their efficiency calcs - although at current coal prices, a 10% swing in efficiency really doesn't have that big an impact on delivered power price.  (e.g., at $2/MMBtu coal, 30% efficiency costs 2.3 cents/kWh.  Go to 40% and you're up to 3.0 cents.  That 0.7 cents is virtually irrelevant relative to the 6 - 10 cents these plants need for capital amortization.)  The bonkers data out of the Livermore data is the capex - no one has built a coal plant at those prices in decades, much less an IGCC.  As an example, look at today's press release from Tenaska quoting almost $4000/kW for a coal IGCC plant that doesn't even include the CO2 sequestration.  

So yeah, the Livermore guys have a fine handle on efficiency.  But that's irrelevant to the question as to whether or not there is any economic justification to clean coal.