By AP/KWMU
St. Louis, MO – The largest coal company in the country, St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, announced plans on Wednesday to build a a facility in Illinois to turn coal into natural gas.
The company did not name a site within the state.
Peabody owns about nine billion tons of coal nationwide. The company says the Illinois plant is in the early stages of development and will consume about 3 million tons of coal each year, when completed.
The technology to turn coal into natural gas has been around more than a decade, but experts say natural gas must be very expensive for the process to be profitable.
Peabody raised money for the new plant from a private investment firm called ArcLight Capital Partners, of Boston.