WASHINGTON - The chairman of a key U.S. Senate panel signaled support Thursday for keeping the FutureGen project slated for Mattoon alive until a new president can evaluate the experimental $1.8 billion clean-coal project.

"The next administration's going to make the ultimate decision," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Appropriation's energy and water subcommittee. "What we're going to try to do is preserve the amount of money available."

Dorgan's remarks, made after a hearing on FutureGen, represented a potential boost for Illinois lawmakers and other FutureGen supporters as they try to revive the project.

President Bush proposed FutureGen five years ago as a public-private partnership to test the viability of a near-zero emissions coal-fired power plant.

But in January, shortly after Mattoon was chosen as the site for the plant, the administration scuttled the initiative, citing its escalating price tag. Department of Energy officials now are pursuing a revamped coal project that calls for multiple smaller-scale facilities across the country.

The skirmish over FutureGen comes as lawmakers gird for a major battle over global warming, which Dorgan and others said gives fresh urgency to clean-coal initiatives.

At Thursday's hearing, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman squared off.

"You pulled the plug on this project and left them (Mattoon residents) hanging," Durbin told Bodman at Thursday's hearing, as the city's public works director, David Wortman, sat in the audience. "The good news is a new administration is on the way."

Durbin pressed Bodman to explain why Energy Department officials got cold feet about cost increases, which Durbin said were predictable forces of inflation.

Bodman disputed that but said he didn't know why the project's price tag had skyrocketed from an estimated $950 million in 2003 to $1.8 billion.

"You can't answer these basic questions," scolded Durbin.

"You want to have $3 billion shipped to Illinois," Bodman retorted but didn't explain the figure.

Bodman defended the decision to scrap the Mattoon facility, saying it was unsustainable "either politically or economically." He said he made "a very difficult decision" to kill the project "in order to save it from itself."

Durbin and others want to restrict the $100 million Congress has approved for the project, so the Energy Department can't use it for anything other than the Mattoon facility.

Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., who serves on the energy and water subcommittee, said the country's energy and environmental challenges required big investments such as the Mattoon FutureGen project.

"We stand at the edge of a new era" in energy, Bond said. "But we're not going to get there by trying to convince ourselves that three little projects are better than one."

Other senators hinted they would not favor new funding for the project over the Department of Energy's objections.

Deirdre Shesgreen can be reached at dshesgreen@post-dispatch.com.