Clean-coal project remains stuck (Columbus)

A $6 billion clean-coal project supported by the Strickland administration isn’t dead, despite financing problems and opposition from environmental groups.

Boosted by the recent extension of a bonding agreement with a state agency, Baard Energy LLC is working on landing private-sector funding that would allow it to break ground this summer on a coal-to-liquid-fuels plant in eastern Ohio, said CEO John Baardson. That would put the plant on track to open in 2013.

The proposed plant, which would convert coal and biomass materials to diesel and jet fuels, has been dogged by environmental groups that have sued over air and water quality permits issued for it by the Ohio EPA. Baard also has struggled to line up private financing.

“The big thing,” Baardson said, “has been the uncertain credit environment. ... That has slowed us down.”

Baardson’s energy development company, based in Vancouver, Wash., has been working on plans for the Ohio plant since 2006. It would be part of a new multimodal port facility along the Ohio River in Wellsville, about 20 miles north of Steubenville.

Read the full story in Business First of Columbus.