The deadline for submitting Phase 1 applications to the DOE for loan guarantees for coal gasification projects has passed. The application deadline was December 22, 2008. Developers worked furiously in November and December to complete their DOE loan guarantee applications and turn them in by the deadline of December 22, 2008. It will be interesting [...]

Panda Ethanol announced that it has terminated Lurgi Inc. as the general contractor for the Hereford, Texas plant. Panda Ethanol terminated Lurgi’s general contractor contract to construct the Hereford, Texas ethanol plant because Lurgi did not meet the guaranteed substantial completion date. The termination action was approved by Panda’s Board of Directors and with the [...]

EPA denies the Sierra Club petition to reconsider the Gasification Rule. The Sierra Club and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network filed a petition with the EPA on April 11, 2008 asking the EPA to reconsider the “Gasification Rule”. The Gasification Rule was adopted by the EPA in December 2007 and allows refineries to process oil [...]

On January 30, 2008 the DOE announced a “Restructured FutureGen”. On June 24, 2008, the DOE announced a financial assistance funding opportunity. The deadline for submission of applications for the “Restructured Futuregen” funding opportunity was October 8, 2008. The DOE and NETL have not released any information about the number of applications that were received [...]

Coal Gasification News wrote an opinion article that coal gasification loan guarantees are needed in the United States. This week the DOE announced a program to provide $8 billion in loan guarantees for coal gasification projects and coal power projects that have CO2 carbon capture and sequestration. The program is funded throught the authority of [...]

Sunflower Electric Power Corporation is seeking an air permit for construction of a pulverized coal technology power plant in Kansas. The Kansas Division of Health and Enviroment (KDHE) would not approve the application for the air permit on the grounds that it did not evaluate the effect of CO2 emissions. The KDHE Secretary Roderick Bremby [...]

Hunton Energy filed an application for an air permit with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). Hunton Energy has announced plans to construct a petcoke gasification plant in Freeport, Texas adjacent to Dow Oyster Creek Plant.

The EPA has approved an air permit for a 1,500 Mw pulverized coal power plant in New Mexico without a CO2 solution.

Southeast Idaho Energy, LLC re-issued it’s air permit for the Power County, Idaho coal gasification project. There were major revisions to the project and therefore the permit had to be re-submitted. The capacity was revised from 3,000 to 4,000 tpd coal and petcoke to 2,000 to 3,000 tpd coal and petcoke. It was revised to [...]

FutureGen is a good example of the challenges of letting government agencies be involved in engineering and building projects with a time span longer than one year. FutureGen was first created in 2003 when the Department of Energy (DOE) announced plans to build the first zero emissions power plant in the U.S. The project was [...]