WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Tuesday defeated two coal-to-liquids measures, one pushed by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and the other similar to legislation promoted by the late Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo.

The Tester amendment to the energy bill on the Senate floor would have provided up to $200 million in grant money and $10 billion in direct loans for coal gasification projects.

The projects would have been required to have annual life cycle greenhouse gas emissions at least 20 percent lower than conventional plants' emissions and to have captured and stored at least 75 percent of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released to the atmosphere.

The amendment was voted down 33-61. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., voted in favor.

Before the vote, Tester said his amendment would develop coal responsibly. He said the technology already exists to meet the 75 percent requirement.

"This amendment is entirely doable by the industry, and if we want to develop our coal resources in a manner that meets the needs of the consumers in this country in a responsible way that won't trash our environment when climate change is such a huge issue in this world, we need to step forward and adopt this amendment," he said.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., spoke against Tester's amendment, saying the $10 billion would be directly approved by congressional appropriators without White House approval. The money also does not have to go to coal-to-liquids technologies, he said.

"It can go for a number of technologies and if you can't reach it in clean coal, you'll reach it in the others," Domenici said. "The standards are so high you may not be able to achieve them in coal-to-liquids."

Tester's amendment would allow the conversion of coal, petroleum residue, renewable biomass or other material into a synthetic gas.

Environmental groups oppose liquefied coal, saying the fuel produces more greenhouse gases than diesel.

The Senate also defeated, 39-55, a coal-to-liquids amendment authored by Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky. It was a scaled-back version of a measure he and Thomas had unsuccessfully proposed in committee.

The Bunning amendment would have required 6 billion gallons of coal-derived liquids to be used annually by 2022. It would have required the fuels to achieve at least a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emission compared with gasoline.

The original measure that Bunning promoted with Thomas would have boosted that number to 21 billion gallons by the same year. It failed last month on a 12-11 party-line vote in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Enzi co-sponsored the Bunning amendment. Baucus and Tester voted against it.

"There is no question that (the technology) can be used today in our transportation markets," Enzi said. "It can be transported in pipelines that currently exist. And, because it comes from coal -- our nation's most abundant energy source -- it can be produced at home by American workers."

Enzi called Tester's proposal impractical, saying it is technologically unrealistic and could actually hinder development of coal-to-liquid technology.

Tester spoke against the Bunning measure. Noting the 20 percent requirement, Tester said coal-based liquids do not produce a gasoline-equivalent fuel, but one more like diesel. He said that would be 150 percent higher in greenhouse gas emissions than diesel produced from petroleum.

He noted that the Bunning amendment would also limit production to fuels, not products like fertilizer or plastics, as his amendment would allow. Also unlike his amendment, it would also not require coal-to-liquid plants to capture the carbon dioxide they produce, Tester noted.