Indiana hasn't seen a new major power plant built in more than 20 years. As you might imagine, the Hoosier State has a growing electricity demand like everywhere else and can't wait to have a boost to its supply of affordable energy.

Duke Energy's Edwardsport IGCC project Duke Energy's Edwardsport IGCC project

The Factuality Tour dropped by a small town in southwest Indiana to see the work taking place to build the largest facility in the world to use integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology to produce electricity.

The advanced IGCC technology is a way to gasify coal, strip out pollutants, and then use the cleaner gas to produce electricity. As a result, the new large-scale facility, being built adjacent to the existing Edwardsport Generating Station, will be one of the cleanest coal-based power plants in the world - and when it's ready for commercial operations in 2012, it will produce nearly 10 times as much power as the existing plant with dramatically less environmental impact.

As an added bonus, the geological conditions at the new plant's site along the White River between the towns of Edwardsport and Bicknell are ideal for IGCC technology - and the eventual addition of permanent CO2 storage.

To meet Indiana's growing energy demand, Duke Energy began planning to build a new generating facility a few years ago. To help things along and ensure access to an affordable supply of electricity, the community rallied around Duke Energy's proposal. In fact, during the permitting process for the project, rows of "IGCC Yes" signs filled front yards all over Indiana's Knox County.

Community Support for Clean Coal Duke Energy's Edwardsport IGCC project

Thanks to steadfast support from the local community, the Edwardsport project took important steps to becoming a reality:

• Indiana Senate Bill 29 -enacted in 2002 - encouraged clean coal and authorized mechanisms for timely recovery of costs.
• Indiana Senate Bill 378 - enacted in 2005 - provided an investment tax credit for integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) projects using coal.
• Local tax abatements approved by Knox County gave further support for the project.
• The Energy Policy Act of 2005 provided a federal investment tax credit.

Thanks to the support of the community, southwest Indiana will have a new power plant with significantly fewer emissions than its existing generating facilities.

During previous Factuality Tour stops, we have visited existing power plants where has been undertaken to retrofit their facilities to adopt technologies to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from the post-combustion process.

Given the size of America's coal-based electricity fleet, technology like we've seen at these plants will play an important role in reducing CO2 emissions.

Duke Energy, however, gave us a chance to learn about a different side of the CO2-reduction world: new power plants that can separate CO2 from the fuel prior to combustion.

Duke's Edwardsport plant will be the largest facility in the world to use integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology to produce electricity. This technology will result in CO2 emissions that are 45 percent less per unit of energy produced than the current units at Edwardsport.

In addition, Duke has committed to installing selective catalytic reduction equipment to remove nitrogen oxide, which would make it the cleanest IGCC plant in the nation.

Our question as we arrived in Mattoon was: what do people in town think of FutureGen?

We Support FutureGen

The answer became obvious nearly every storefront we passed in Mattoon had a sign in the window saying: "We Support FutureGen."

This town understands what a great boost the plant will be to the local economy - it will provide clean energy jobs and attract the best and brightest students to nearby colleges and universities who want to be a part of it. They also understand what this technology will mean to the rest of the world.

Why did we come to Mattoon? Well first of all, our car broke down. But our stop here was a perfect way to end the trip, since this city is a symbol of the future of clean coal technology.

Mattoon, Ill.: Site of FutureGen

As we've seen, coal-based electricity facilities have made great strides in reducing nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants from ever being emitted into the air. In fact, when it comes to all regulated pollutants, coal plants are 77 percent cleaner in terms of emissions currently regulated under existing Clean Air Act programs per unit of energy produced.

But what about carbon dioxide and other emissions?

One answer (there are many!) is FutureGen, a public-private partnership to build the world's first near-zero emissions coal-based power plant. Mattoon is the best site in the entire country to build the plant, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, due to the surrounding geology.

Power plants are not required to capture their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but they are working hard on the technology anyway.

Alstom's Carbon Capture Pilot Project Carbon Capture at work

The pilot facility at the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant takes about 1 percent of its flue gas for use in the carbon capture demonstration project.

Using a chilled ammonia process developed by Alstom Power Inc., the test project captures 90 percent of the carbon emissions. The demonstration project began in March 2008 and will last for two years.

Later on the Factuality Tour, we'll see this technology in action elsewhere in the country, including one that will come online as the nation's first commercial-grade power plant to capture and sequester its own emissions.

We arrived in this small town near Lake Michigan to visit the power plant that has the lowest emission rate of any coal-based electricity plant in Wisconsin: the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant (dubbed P4 by the workers we met), owned by We Energies.

We Energies Pleasant Prairie Power Plant

Since being built about 30 years ago, P4 installed a retrofit system that has resulted in a 90 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide and a 95 percent reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions.

Here at P4, we got a first-hand look at the latest generation of clean coal technology: efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by capturing the carbon as it escapes in the flue gas.

When it comes to clean coal technology, Tenaska Energy flies under the radar. Most people haven’t even heard of the company, although they and others play a big role in bringing innovative technology to market.

Tenaska has developed about 9,000 megawatts using a balanced mix of fuels. The company told us that its involvement in clean coal technology has come in response to customer desire to use coal, which is America’s most abundant and affordable fuel source.

As such, Tenaska has been an innovator in protecting and improving the environments associated with its power plant projects.

In fact, the National Resources Defense Council listed Tenaska in 2008 as the top company in the United States that generates power from fossil fuels.

What's it like inside a power plant?

For one thing, it's cleaner than you think. As you walk inside, machinery is humming along - earplugs are required.

Someone who hasn't seen a power plant since the 1950s probably wouldn't recognize one today, due to all the additional environmental technology to improve energy efficiency and reduce pollutants.

The MidAmerican Energy plant we toured uses the best available environmental control technology to minimize emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter.

This is clean coal technology in action!

Located four miles south of Council Bluffs, Iowa, MidAmerican Energy's Walter Scott Energy Center is one of the cleanest of its kind in North America.

It generates more than 1,600 megawatts of affordable electricity, which has a positive long-term economic impact on the region (a region that includes a Google data facility).

The on-site settling pond provides successful nesting sites for two endangered bird species: the piping plover and the least tern.

The facility employs over 200 people with an annual payroll of about $17.5 million. And it pays over $7 million in annual property tax.