Illinois businesses are petitioning state lawmakers to strike down legislation that would impose $12 billion in consumer subsidies to support a planned coal gasification plant they say isn't needed and would cost electricity customers far more than originally promised.
Supporters of the project, which would be sited in Taylorville, about 20 miles southeast of Springfield, contend the plant could serve as a model for future clean-coal initiatives while creating 2,400 construction jobs and 155 permanent jobs. They also believe the $3.6-billion plant, to be developed by Omaha, Neb.-based Tenaska, would jump start the state's struggling coal industry.