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Media Credit: Jason Johnson A Physical Plant worker at the SIUC power plant checks the coal after it has been crushed into small particles and moves into the boiler. University officials said Thursday that plans for a much larger coal-fired power plant would be put on hold.

Plans to build a coal gasification power plant on campus have been put on hold, university officials said Thursday.

For the project to be feasible, the plant would have to be too big and too expensive to be constructed on campus, said Physical Plant Director Phil Gatton. The announcement came as the university released a "fatal flaws" study that was performed to determine whether the university should further pursue the project.

Initial plans were for the plant to produce between 150 and 200 megawatts of power. But an economically sound project would involve building an industrial-sized plant producing at least 300 megawatts of electricity, Gatton said.

"When we started to look at an industrial plant, it didn't make as much sense for it to be located here on the university," he said.

Gatton said three potential sites - west of the main campus near McLafferty Annex, the Southern Hills area and near the Coal Research Center on the Carterville campus - were considered during the study.

The plant would have cost about $1.5 billion to build, he said. When SIU President Glenn Poshard first proposed the project, he estimated the project's price would be between $200 million and $250 million.

Poshard has said the structure would supply power for SIUC as well as other state universities and local communities. The project was estimated to produce 2,000 construction jobs and 100 to 150 permanent positions.

The proposed plant would have employed coal gasification technology aimed at virtually eliminating the amount of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, released into the atmosphere as the fossil fuel is burnt. Instead, the carbon dioxide would be captured and stored underground.

Coal Research Center Director John Mead said there was also a question of where to store the sequestered carbon dioxide. It is possible some of the captured greenhouse gas could be utilized in industry, he said.

"These are concepts that are very likely to be best managed at sites away from the ones that we looked at," Mead said.

Gatton said the university would continue to look for a long-term solution to address its ever-increasing utility costs. The plant had been touted as a way to supply the university with electricity at a low cost.

"The university doesn't have the capability to react in the short term to significant increases in utility costs," he said.

Poshard said there is a possibility the project could still come to fruition as the result of collaboration with private companies, adding the difficulty of a university being solely responsible for $1.5 billion in construction costs.

The university must take steps toward curbing utility costs in some way, Poshard said. Increased prices have caused the university to dip into its deferred maintenance budget, which students contribute to with the facilities maintenance fee, to pay utility bills, he said.

Andrea Wallace, a member of the Student Environmental Center, said she was pleased to hear the university would not be building the plant in the near future. Wallace said she hoped the university would instead invest more heavily in renewable energy sources such as wind power.

"I think this will give (the Student Environmental Center) and students a chance to work with them in creating more renewable energy options on campus," she said.

Joe Crawford can be reached at 536-3311 ext. 254 or jcrawford@siude.com.

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