Illinois beats Texas in the Coal Bowl

The winner is: Mattoon, Illinois. That's where the FutureGen coal-burning, state-of-the-engineering electrcity generating plant will be built. The tech going into this plant will as near carbon neutral as current science and engineering can make it.

I'm surprised Texas didn't win, but it was a committee of corporate experts who chose the site, not politicians in Washington. That despite the U.S., taxpayers pickig up about three-fourths of the expected $1.8 billion dollar price tag. If the plant proves commercially viable, it's expected to copied across the world by utilities. Or course, the Mattoon website is blaring out the FutureGen message already. Located in eastern central Illinois, Mattoon has almost 20,000 residents and this new plant will bring lots of construction cash into the area. Prior to FutureGen Mattoon was most famous for its...Soybean Museum.