BOISE – The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality set a national precedent Monday when it issued a permit requiring a proposed Power County fertilizer plant to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 58 percent of what a comparable facility now emits.

Southeast Idaho Energy’s facility would turn coal into gas that would both produce nitrogen fertilizer and sulfur.

The deal gives the company an easier shot at raising money to build the plant by ensuring that environmental groups won’t fight the permit in years of court battles.

And it gives groups like the Sierra Club – which has opposed all new coal plants up to now and has been skeptical about the potential of “clean-coal” technology – a chance to help set the national standard for carbon sequestration from coal plants.