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Taylorville Energy Center Opens Community Relations Office; Names Representative
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CHICAGO –April 23, 2009 –Jack Brown of Taylorville has been named the community representative for the Taylorville Energy Center (TEC).
A community relations office for the energy center also will be established in the coming weeks at 215 S. Washington St., on the Taylorville town square, in space formerly occupied by the Chamber of Commerce.
The two announcements were made by Bill Braudt, business development representative for TEC.
The local community relations representative and office are intended to assure that Taylorville and Christian County residents have easy access to information about TEC. Until the office space is ready, Brown may be reached by phone at (217) 824-8873, by e-mail at projack1@aol.com or at the project Web site, www.cleancoalillinois.com. An office phone and additional information regarding office hours will be announced soon, Braudt said.
Located a mile northeast of Taylorville, the plant will generate enough electricity to power more than 500,000 area homes. TEC will be one of the nation’s first commercial-scale, coal gasification with carbon capture plants. Its technology will convert coal into substitute natural gas (also known as methane) which can be used for electricity generation or fed into the interstate natural gas pipeline system. By capturing and storing more than 50 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2), TEC will have an emissions profile comparable to a natural gas plant.
Achieving such a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gases by a coal-fueled plant is a vital step in the global effort to combat climate change. TEC will create 1,500 construction jobs and hundreds of permanent mining and plant operations jobs. Tenaska, the managing partner of TEC, 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.
“The Taylorville Energy Center development team is committed to open, two-way communication with the businesses and residents of the Taylorville region. One of the best ways to make that happen is to have a representative of the project in Taylorville who is only a local phone call and a few blocks away,” said Braudt.
Brown will complete his term on the Taylorville City Council in May. He was the coordinator of economic development for Taylorville and Christian County for three years. Before that, he had an honored 34-year career as a teacher, high school principal and district administrator.
Brown and his wife, Penny, have two grown sons. He is an Army veteran and has earned degrees in education from Southeast Missouri State University and the University of Missouri, and has done additional graduate study at the University of Illinois.
In addition to service on the city council, Brown is or has been a member of the Oak Hill Cemetery Board of Managers, Lincoln Land Community College Coordinator, St. Vincent’s Hospital Board of Trustees, Masonic Lodge, Shrine, Lions Club, United Way, Scouting, United Methodist Men’s activities and other church and community organizations and events.
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.
About Tenaska
Tenaska has developed approximately 9,000 megawatts (MW) of electric generating capacity across the United States. Tenaska’s affiliates operate and manage eight power plants in six states totaling more than 6,700 MW of generating capacity owned in partnership with other companies. Tenaska Capital Management, an affiliate, provides management services for standalone private equity funds, with more than $3 billion in assets, including ten power plants (with approximately 6,000 MW of capacity), gas storage facilities, and transmission infrastructure construction and maintenance operations.
Tenaska is well underway in its development of two environmentally responsible, coal-fueled power plants. Taylorville Energy Center in Taylorville, Ill., will incorporate coal gasification, combined-cycle and CO2 capture and sequestration technology, making it one of the first clean-coal, commercially-sized plants in the world. Trailblazer Energy Center in Nolan County, Texas, would be the first conventional coal-fueled power plant in the nation to capture on a commercial scale up to 90 percent of the CO2 that would otherwise enter the atmosphere. In 2008, Tenaska was listed in benchmarking studies by the Natural Resources Defense Council as having the best fleet-wide record in the United States for controlling emissions of CO2, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. For more information about Tenaska, visit www.tenaska.com.
About Christian County Generation, LLC
Christian County Generation, LLC, a joint venture of Omaha-based independent power developer Tenaska and Louisville, Ky.-based MDL Holding Co., LLC., is developing the Taylorville Energy Center (TEC). TEC is the first clean coal power plant proposed for the state. It will incorporate coal gasification, combined-cycle and CO2 capture and sequestration technology, making it among the most environmentally-responsible, commercially-sized coal plants in the world.
Details on the project and the technology, along with other information can be found at www.cleancoalillinois.com.
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Media Contacts:
Holley Hatt, Tenaska
Office: (402) 691-9710
Mobile: (402) 709-8293
hhatt@tenaska.com
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