Two different kinds of rejection....

In today's Akron Beacon Journal there is a story about two Ohio sites being rejected for a $1 billion zero-pollution power plant:

The FutureGen Alliance, at a news conference this morning in Washington, D.C., narrowed the list of potential sites to two in Illinois and two in Texas.

Those sites will be analyzed further to determine which location is best for the experimental coal-burning plant that is being developed by the U.S. Department of Energy and could be operating by 2012.

Ohio officials intend to meet with FutureGen officials to determine why Ohio sites did not rank higher, said Mark Shanahan, executive director of the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority.

The plant is expected to create 100 full-time research and plant jobs in addition to 1,000 construction jobs along with increased university research.

Then here in Toledo, in yesterday's Toledo Blade a company that wanted to come here to create an alternate energy source was rejected by our government:

Rich Dunn, Toledo partner of a fledgling North Carolina group called Bio-Energy Conversion LLC, hopes the city's involvement goes well beyond that. Formed 2 1/2 years ago, Bio-Energy expects to produce cheap natural gas out of coal within six months for Michelin Aircraft Tire Corp.'s production facility in Norwood, N.C.

Bio-Energy's plan for Toledo: building a similar plant here, except garbage from the city's Hoffman Road landfill would be mashed into a pulp and used instead of coal. "There's a tremendous amount of energy that's just lying there being wasted," Mr. Dunn said.

Bio-Energy had wanted to use the city's Hoffman Road landfill waste to generate electricity for the city's Bay View wastewater treatment plant on Summit Street, Mr. Dunn said.

But the city has opted to generate its own electricity with the landfill's methane, on the belief its plan was more straightforward and less risky.

The city plans to pipe the landfill's methane to the sewage plant, where it will be used to spin turbines that generate electricity.

This fall, about 2.5 miles of pipeline is to be laid. By this time next year, the turbines, the computers, and other equipment are to be operating.

The project is to cost $20 million. Consultants believe there's enough methane to power the sewage plant for 30 to 40 years, Bill Franklin, the city's public service director, said.

Maybe Bio-Energy's plan for using garbage or using dredged material to make bricks wouldn't work, but maybe it would and it's disappointing that Toledo once again won't take a chance on something that could bring even more attention and possible jobs to this area. Areas that are going to progress and move forward are the ones that look for new ideas especially when it comes to energy...

This article was written for the Carnival of Ohio Politics brought to you by Paul Miller of Northwest Ohio Net