Global warming already may have hit Utah hard, but a well-financed research project headed by a University of Utah scientist is trying to do something about it.

The hit was not delivered directly by climate change. It's a financial pounding by the state of California, which is determined to unplug new power sources that would contribute significant amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. In Utah, that means a third electrical generating unit, powered by coal and projected for the Intermountain Power Project near Lynndyl, Millard County, has been called off after six years of planning.

At the heart of the debate is carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas released as pollution when power plants burn coal to produce electricity. The Environmental Protection Agency has labeled CO2 "the most important global warming gas emitted by human activities."

According to a lawsuit filed in 2006 by the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power — which owns more of the IPP output than any other entity — torpedoed the IPP's proposed third unit because of concerns that its greenhouse gases could contribute to global warming.

Cancellation of the 900-megawatt unit would reduce sales of power generated in Utah and undermine Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems' own plans for electricity from the unit.

However, if coal-burning power plants could be fitted with technology to sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions, a consortium of agencies believes they could meet the strict new California requirements. Perhaps the third unit could be built after all.

Because some sort of carbon reduction rules are likely to be imposed by the federal government, and because cleaning up the environment seems like a good idea to many, with or without global warming, government and industry groups are paying many millions of dollars to find solutions.

California was the first state to pass a comprehensive CO2-reduction program. Its Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 requires that by 2020 greenhouse emissions be reduced to 1990 levels. The speaker of the California Assembly estimated that would be a 25 percent drop.

Cities in Southern California are the destination of about 10 million megawatt-hours of power from the two units of the IPP. That's out of 13 million megawatt-hours generated yearly. (A megawatt-hour is the electricity produced by generating one megawatt of electricity for one hour.)

Brian McPherson, director of the Southwest Regional Partnership for Carbon Sequestration and an associate professor at the University of Utah, said coal-powered generating facilities produce most, though by no means all, of the electricity generated in the West.