Energy Department scraps coal project.

• Position: TRENDS AND TRANSITIONS - Brief article

The small Illinois town of Mattoon was selected this past December as the future site of the world's first near-zero-emissions coal-burning plant. But a month later the U.S. Department of Energy decided to back out of the project citing huge cost overruns and technological advances.

A nonprofit consortium of multinational coal and energy companies and the Department of Energy called The FutureGen Alliance was to carry out the project with 74 percent of the $1.8 billion price tag coming from the Department of Energy.

By 2013, the plant was expected to produce electricity from gasified coal with almost no pollutants and only 10 percent of the carbon dioxide as compared to today's coal-fired plants. The "living laboratory" expected to capture and store carbon dioxide in a liquid form deep underground.

The decision by the Department of Energy is a blow to coal producers and utilities, which had hoped to use the...