W.Va. fights other states for next-gen power plant

[Rose Siding]

ST. LOUIS — In fierce bidding reminiscent of efforts two decades ago to win the superconducting super collider, seven states including West Virginia 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.
...
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.
...
Texas has emerged victorious in duels like this before, having outbid Illinois and other states in the 1980s in snatching the super collider, what was to have been a 54-mile underground ring of magnets that would smash protons together.

Though scientists once hoped the $11 billion project would help unlock the secrets of matter and energy, it was just one-fifth complete when Congress pulled the plug on it in 1993 at a cost to taxpayers of $2 billion.

http://wvgazette.com/section/News/2006061731?pt=0

[AlecBGreen]

1. call me stupid

but why not capture the CO2 and use it to grow crops? In cold weather, a solar house with high CO2 levels can grow food like mad.