The U.S. Department of Energy announced that they will not be building the world's largest clean coal power plant in Mattoon, Illinois. The Department stated that the cost had doubled since the original conception of the facility and that instead of committing to the single FutureGen site in Mattoon they would explore multiple sites around the country. The cost of the plant had been most recently estimated at 1.8 billion.

Illinois officials were not pleased with the decision although they felt it was predictable. "We feel that [Energy Secretary Sam Bodman] misled us and the people of Illinois, creating false hope in a FutureGen project which he had no intention of funding or supporting," Illinois lawmakers including Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin wrote in a letter to President George W. Bush. As well, the The FutureGen Alliance, comprised of a dozen international energy companies released a "fact check" stating that the Department's share of the cost of the plant had not doubled but instead risen from $800M to $1.1B, and that the alternative plan, centered around multiple CCS facilities, would end up sequestering less carbon than the Mattoon plant.

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