August 17, 2010

Tenaska, managing partner for the Taylorville Energy Center (TEC), announced July 26 that the project has been awarded a US$417 million investment tax credit-believed to be the largest ever granted to a single project-under a program jointly administered by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Treasury Department. Cost savings from the tax credit will be passed through to Illinois electric utility customers under the Illinois Clean Coal Portfolio Standard Law (Clean Coal Law).

Compiter illustration of the Taylorville Energy Center. Courtesy Tenaska Energy. To qualify for the credit, the DOE was required to evaluate competing projects and certify that TEC is both technically and economically "feasible" and that it can be operated to capture at least 65 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions. Following its evaluation, DOE certified the project and ranked TEC first among bituminous coal projects, enabling the plant to receive this significant federal tax credit.

The TEC, estimated to cost US$3.5 billion, will be the cleanest coal-fed commercial scale power plant in the United States, converting Illinois coal into syngas, and then cleanly and efficiently burning the gas to produce electricity. TEC will create 2,500 construction jobs and hundreds of permanent jobs, according to an extensive engineering study and Facility Cost Report prepared under the Clean Coal Law. The Facility Cost Report calculated the plant's cost and rate impact based upon a detailed engineering assessment of the labor and materials needed to build the plant.

This 1,800-page report, the work of more than a dozen nationally renowned engineering and consulting firms, concluded that the plant would result in an average projected rate impact of approximately 1.8 percent for the utilities' residential customers, adding about 6 cents a day to a typical customer's bill. The report demonstrated that the project would create more jobs than previously estimated, with 10 million labor hours required to build the plant. It also found that TEC would reduce the state's carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 2 million tons per year.

Under the Clean Coal Law, purchases from TEC are not permitted to cause utility residential rates to increase by more than 2.015 percent. Electricity customers would see no impact on their bills until mid-2015, when the project is slated for completion.

Source: Zeus Development Corporation July 28, 2010