The Buffalo News reports that state officials have stopped a proposed $1.6 billion advanced coal project that would have brought more than 1,000 construction and operating jobs to the Town of Tonawanda, saying it would cost taxpayers too much and relied on technology that remains unproven.

The Huntley Generating Station in the Town of Tonawanda (photo courtesy Buffalo News)The proposed 680-megawatt plant at Huntley Station would have required annual subsidies of $175 million to $250 million, saddling taxpayers with a burden of billions over the next 20 years.

The New York Power Authority also had questions about the viability of the plans to capture the carbon dioxide that the facility generates, liquefy it and store it in geological formations more than a mile underground, where it would be expected to stay for thousands of years.

The Huntley Plant would have generated three times more than the world's current largest sequestration project, and officials felt the facility was hinging on unproven environmental technology. Prompted by conclusions that the project was too expensive and too risky, NYPA pulled the conditional offer it made in December 2006 to buy the electricity the new plant would have generated. That pledge, if finalized, would have been a key factor in efforts by NRG Energy, which owns the Huntley plant, to obtain financing for the project.