When President George W. Bush announced the FutureGen initiative in February of 2003, he described it as a 10-year, $1 billion, government/private partnership to build a coal-based, zero-emissions electricity and hydrogen producing power plant. It would provide the American people and the world with advanced technologies that would help meet the world's energy needs, and would improve the global environment for future generations. Spencer Abraham, then-Secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE), went even further. This "bold step" would turn coal from an "environmentally challenging energy resource into an environmentally benign one" and demonstrate the best technologies the world had to offer.