Reply #6: States vie for next-generation power plant [View All]

ST. LOUIS - In fierce bidding reminiscent of efforts two decades ago to win the superconducting super collider, seven states are aggressively trying to land a billion-dollar power plant prototype that's virtually pollution free.

Home to a third of the dozen sites chasing FutureGen, Illinois has up to $80 million in incentives on the table, from grants to low-interest loans. Ohio is offering twice that, while Texas has passed a law making it responsible for any legal entanglements stemming from the coal-fired plant's carbon dioxide emissions.

Some of the states are ponying up everything from sales-tax relief to free land, pushing the enticements into the hundreds of millions of dollars in the hunt for more than 1,000 construction jobs and 150 permanent ones, along with the researchers and side businesses the plant should attract.

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Touted as the power plant of tomorrow, FutureGen involves technology that converts coal into highly enriched hydrogen gas that burns cleaner than coal. Plans call for the 275-megawatt plant to capture most of its emissions of carbon dioxide — a "greenhouse" gas widely blamed for global warming — and inject them permanently into underground reservoirs, a process called sequestration.

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