Just days after an appropriations bill needed to implement the Illinois Clean Coal Portfolio Standard was signed, Tenaska, managing partner of the Taylorville Energy Center (TEC) project, hired the Westchester, Illinois office of WorleyParsons to oversee the Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) and facility cost report.

The FEED and facility cost report must be submitted to the Illinois Commerce Commission and Illinois General Assembly before the project can be built, according to Tenaska, TEC managing partner.

The facility cost report is intended to protect consumers by ensuring the rate impact from construction of the plant is limited to the benchmark contained in the Clean Coal Portfolio Standard law.

Under the terms of the approximately $1.5 million contract, WorleyParsons will serve as the 'owner's engineer', coordinating preliminary project engineering and preparing reports over the approximately 12 month FEED process.

The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity will provide funding for a portion of this contract and other expenses for the facility cost report.

TEC will become one of the nation's first commercial-scale, coal gasification with carbon capture plants. Its technology converts coal into substitute natural gas which can be used for electricity generation or fed into the interstate natural gas pipeline.

By capturing and storing more than 50 percent of the carbon dioxide, TEC will have an emissions profile comparable to natural gas.

Tenaska estimates that the net effect of operating the plant will reduce CO2 emissions by at least one million tons per year, as higher emitting power facilities are displaced by the cleaner, more efficient, TEC.

With an estimated total cost of $3.5 billion, TEC will create 1,500 construction jobs and hundreds of permanent mining and operations jobs.

"Illinois is starting to benefit from clean coal and its rich potential for green collar jobs," said Bart Ford, Tenaska vice president.

"WorleyParsons is not only a company with a strong local presence in Illinois, but it is one of the most experienced companies for this job. We look forward to working together with them on bringing this project to fruition."

"WorleyParsons is honored to be selected as Tenaska's Owner's Engineer for the Taylorville Energy Center. It is an important assignment on a groundbreaking project that will use proven technology to produce clean energy from Illinois' most plentiful energy resource, coal. We look forward to a long and successful business relationship," said WorleyParsons' Scott Johnson, Vice President of Business Development.

TEC is being developed by Christian County Generation, LLC, a joint venture of Omaha-based independent power developer Tenaska and Louisville, Ky.-based MDL Holding Co., LLC.