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Miles City interested in hydrogen plant
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At least one thing was clear here after meetings involving a proposed $1.2 billion federal hydrogen-electricity power plant: The welcome mat is out.
Billings Gazette
"We want every consortium that comes forward to know that we (the Montana Department of Commerce) support this technology. Montana has all the resources needed for fuel cell technology," said Tod Kasten, a department employee and an organizer of Montanans for Responsible Energy Development.
"Even if we don’t move forward as a state with an application, we want those consortiums to know we’re very interested," he said.
The consortium led by the coal-fired electric power industry and the coal production industry would pair with the federal Department of Energy to build and operate the prototype plant to test coal-to-hydrogen production and near-zero-emission electric power generation.
Known as FutureGen, the project is on an unprecedented fast track for development, said Lowell Miller, fossil energy director at DOE.
Miller was a featured speaker at a pair of meetings here Thursday to gauge what interest the proposal might generate in Eastern Montana.
More than 100 people attended the evening meeting, including representatives of members of the Montana congressional delegation, a dozen state legislators and Lt. Gov. Karl Ohs.
The FutureGen project goal is to take technology development that would normally take 20 years and cut that about in half, Miller said. There is intense pressure within government to get research that can promote the "hydrogen economy" very swiftly through cooperation with private industry, so the technology can be available on the market in 10 to 15 years.
Miller outlined the federal government’s position while Meyer Steinberg of Brookhaven Labs in New York outlined the scientific basis for the project’s goal of finding ways to convert coal into hydrogen. He said the hydrogen would be used to generate electric power at the plant, or as fuel for fuel-cell-powered vehicles that would emit only clean water as a waste.
Nearly all the noxious pollutants would be trapped and either safely disposed of or converted to useful products. Carbon dioxide, which comprises 60 percent of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, would be permanently "sequestered," or pumped into geological formations to keep it out of the atmosphere.
The Request for Information published in the Federal Register April 21 says the DOE intends to "noncompetitively enter into a cooperative agreement with a consortium led by the coal-fired electric power industry and the coal production industry."
It said that consortium, together with a government steering committee, would be responsible for the design, construction and operation of the FutureGen plant.
The project is allotted $1.2 billion at this point, of which DOE would pay 80 percent and the consortium 20 percent. Consortium members get rights to the intellectual property of technical innovations and five years of operational data, Miller said.
Miller said that when the 10-year project is complete, the consortium will own the prototype plant. It could continue to do its own research, and the DOE might want to negotiate a new research contract.
Or, because the 275-megawatt plant is on a practical market scale, the consortium may want to simply have it continue to sell its products for a profit.
While there is no way that Montana-based companies could make up the consortium alone, Miller said Montana state government could play a role as a potential consortium member to help organize it. The state and Montana coal and energy companies could also help present geological and natural resource information regarding carbon dioxide sequestration potential to help persuade the consortium to locate the facility in Montana.
There is a June 16 deadline to respond to the request for information, after which an evaluation committee likely will be chosen to assess the proposals.
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Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
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