The governor gets super ambitious.

Pointing to high fuel costs and dependence on foreign oil, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich wants his state to overhaul its energy sources with a strategy that experts said would be among the nation’s most ambitious, including replacing half its current supply of gasoline from imported oil with that made from homegrown products in little more than a decade.

On Tuesday, Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat seeking a second term in November, will announce a five-part, $1.2 billion plan, elements of which would require the legislature’s support, aides said.

Highlights include:

Investing $225 million to build as many as 20 new ethanol facilities, five new biodiesel facilities and four new facilities that use corn husks or other plant waste to manufacture ethanol. The increased production of ethanol and biofuels would enable Illinois to replace half of its current supply of imported oil with renewable, homegrown energy sources, according to the governor’s office.

Spending $30 million to boost the number of gasoline stations that sell biofuels, especially E85, which consists of 85 percent ethanol. By 2010, an additional 900 stations would sell E85.

Spending $775 million to help build as many as 10 new coal gasification plants that would use Illinois coal. The resulting energy would meet some of the state’s need for diesel fuel, natural gas and electricity.

Building a $100 million pipeline that would move carbon dioxide from the coal gasification plants to oilfields in southeastern Illinois, where more oil and natural gas would be extracted from the ground.

Much of the $1.2 billion plan will be funded by stepped-up efforts to collect taxes owed by “largely corporate taxpayers,” said Bob Greenlee, deputy director of the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget.

This sounds very interesting. You can quibble here and there, of course, but how could you not be for stuff like this?

UPDATE: The Sierra Club has a few major quibbles, including this one:

It takes 4-5 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol, and Illinois historically has lacked programs to regulate water withdrawals to ensure that large users in the wrong place do not take water needed for drinking, for wildlife, or for other uses. If 2.5 billion gallons of ethanol are produced in Illinois under this plan, it will require a tremendous amount of water.