Both candidates back a system that would cap greenhouse gas emissions and let companies trade the right to pollute. Cleaner companies would be able to sell credits, or pollution allowances, to dirtier firms as long as they all stayed below the national limit.
Because coal is the most carbon-intensive way to generate electricity, it could end up becoming more expensive than nuclear power or natural gas, according to a recent study by the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry trade group.
Even without a price on carbon, ballooning construction costs led the U.S. Department of Energy in January to quash a $1.8 billion power plant near Downstate Mattoon that had been billed as a model for keeping coal viable. The plant would have captured carbon dioxide emissions and injected the gases deep underground, a process known as carbon sequestration.
One of the remaining coal plants still in the works for Illinois would be designed to more easily use the same technology. But Tenaska Inc., the Omaha-based company seeking to build the new facility near Downstate Taylorville, so far has ruled out installing it.
"We're facing some new challenges, but that's why we need to press on with clean-coal technology," said Phil Gonet, president of the Illinois Coal Association. "Keep in mind we've got a lot of coal, it's low-cost right now and it's a proven way to meet our energy needs."
State projects persevere
Several coal plants across the country are moving forward despite the financial and regulatory uncertainty. The biggest is a 1,600-megawatt power plant in Downstate Washington County being built by the nation's largest coal company, St. Louis-based Peabody Energy.
The giant coal burner is expected to provide electricity to 2.5 million people in nine states. It also would be the largest source of carbon dioxide built in the U.S. in more than two decades, churning out 12 million tons of the gas each year.
Cleaner sources of electricity are under construction as well. During the five years since Peabody and Indeck proposed building new coal plants in Illinois, the state has added more than 700 megawatts of pollution-free wind energy. Nationwide, more than 5,000 megawatts of wind power were added last year, and a recent Energy Department report estimated that wind turbines could provide 20 percent of the nation's electricity by 2030. Wind energy now accounts for about 1 percent of the nation's total electricity.
"The landscape is changing quickly," said Ron Burke, who heads the Chicago office for the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Even the big companies that have relied on coal are starting to invest in wind and other renewable energy. They see the writing on the wall too."