Funding canceled for clean coal plant

 

"Under a looming budget deadline, the U.S. Department of Energy has dropped its plan to give $1 billion in funding to FutureGen 2.0, a $1.65 billion clean coal project in Illinois."

 

https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/funding-canceled-clean-coal-plant?tgt=nr

 

Anyone know more about this? I'm not a conspiracy buff but seems convenient for certain industries to cancel this project not to mention that there is a lot of opposition from some environmentalist to any solution that does not exclude coal altogether.

Even if you believe in clean coal, iirc this technology would only work on newly designed plants, so it would do nothing for all the existing ones. It's not about excluding coal altogether, unless that makes the most sense.

Everything that ever happens is convenient for some groups and inconvenient for others. What, in particular, is special about this one?

It oddly favors both points of view? Mostly I just wanted to know if someone had a quick link to how the decision was formulated in more detail. I don't follow politics that closely

According to the three next-best Google hits I found the reasons were massive delays in the project and the inability to generate required/planned additional funding from industry (both probably at least partially caused by "a lot of opposition from some environmentalist to any solution that does not exclude coal altogether", as indicated in some of the texts).

 

Link 1: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clean-coal-power-plant-killed-again/

Link 2: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/02/04/the-obama-administration-is-cutting-funds-for-a-major-clean-coal-project/

Link 3: http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/rip-futuregen-energy-department-kills-troubled-bush-era-coal-electricity-project-20150203

Well who knows? I would prefer to look at all the solutions but you have to trust that it was carefully considered.