Coal Lobby Eyes Illinois Subsidies

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McGuireWoods Consulting, a Chicago-based PR and lobbying firm, has been hired by the FutureGen Alliance to lobby Illinois legislators to financially support FutureGen, a proposed coal-fired power station which would use the experimental Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology. (CCS is often touted as "clean coal".) "Their task," writes Kurt Erickson, is "to convince the state to buy all the electricity the plant produces. Such a move would help FutureGen secure federal funding" to underwrite the plant's costs. While proposed legislation mandating the purchase of electricity from the plant has won support from an Illinois Senate committee, others have been wary as "FutureGen has not been able to say exactly how much taxpayers would be charged." Working on the account at McGuireWoods Consulting are Tom Londrigan, a former attorney during the first term of former Governor Rod Blagojevich’s and Kyle Barry, a former attorney for the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.