Jul. 25--Ohio was eliminated Tuesday from a vigorous competition to be chosen host site for FutureGen, a $1 billion project intended to demonstrate how coal can be burned with near-zero air pollution emissions to generate electricity.

The FutureGen Alliance, a nonprofit international consortium of coal suppliers and users working with the U.S. Department of Energy to develop the project, said Tuesday in Washington, D.C., that Ohio's two nominated sites had been eliminated from the project.

Two sites in Illinois and two in Texas move to the next level, said Mike Mudd, the alliance's chief executive officer. The remaining sites will go through a yearlong environmental review to help choose a winner, to be announced in the second half of 2007. The plant won't begin operating until 2012.

Seven states, including Ohio, had nominated 12 potential sites for FutureGen by a May 4 deadline.

The project is intended to be a model for future power plants that use coal, one of the nation's most abundant energy resources. The FutureGen plant will also be designed to produce hydrogen as an additional energy source and to capture carbon dioxide emissions so they can be injected into the ground for long-term storage, rather than escape into the air as pollution.

The project will mean at least 1,000 construction and research jobs for the host state, plus supporting private and university research activity, FutureGen officials have said.

In Columbus, state officials said they were disappointed in the decision and would ask FutureGen Alliance officials for more information about how it was reached.

Mudd said coal-producing states including Ohio will benefit from the research efforts and from the project's expected ability to use coal of all types from across the country. There is no appeal from the alliance's decision because of the tight time frame to move forward on the project as quickly as possible, Mudd said.

Jo Ann Davidson, a former Ohio House speaker who is a consultant to the Ohio FutureGen Task Force, said the project's criteria were more specific than are required to locate conventional power plants.

State officials have said Ohio's two sites, in Tuscarawas County and Meigs County, could be used for future power plants or Energy Department research projects.