The first event is scheduled for June 7 in Taylorville and the following day the public can comment in Tuscola in eastern Illinois. Both had been selected as alternate locations for the project.
The third and final hearing will take place in Jacksonville, near the Morgan County site which was chosen in March, after months of shortlisting, to host the project’s carbon storage facility.
The site will also be home to a visitor center as well as research and training facilities.
“Among the factors that resulted in the selection of the Morgan County site are its high quality geology, which is well suited for safe and secure long-term storage of CO2, and its close proximity to the Meredosia power plant, which simplifies pipeline routing and substantially reduces the project’s overall cost,” the FutureGen Alliance said earlier this year.
“Further, there has been a strong show of support from community business and elected leaders, as well as significant support from directly affected landowners.”
Alliance chief executive officer Kenneth Humphreys said the alliance wanted to choose the location which best supported its overall mission in the most cost-effective manner.
FutureGen 2.0 has a total price tag of $US1.3 billion, $1 billion of which has been committed in federal funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It is a smaller version of the original FutureGen project planned for Mattoon, Illinois, which was shelved in 2010.
