JOHNSTON — State landfill officials are courting a developer who hopes to build a new power plant and fuel it with vast quantities of Rhode Island’s trash.

The gasification facility envisioned by Jefferson Renewable Energy might convert as much as 50 or even 75 percent of the state’s garbage into a usable gas, according to Michael J. O’Connell, executive director of the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corp., an independent state agency that oversees the landfill.

That gas would fire a power plant capable of producing 90 megawatts of electricity.

After spending more than $100 million on the plant, the developer would own the facility and the state would be in a far better position to preserve its landfill over a much longer period, O’Connell said.

“With this,” he said, “the landfill could conceivably last another 60 to 75 years.”

“It absolutely is something we are pursuing with them,” O’Connell added.

“They make money selling electricity,” he said. “We save space in the landfill at no cost to the State of Rhode Island.”

O’Connell, who visited a gasification facility in Wisconsin on Tuesday, emphasized that officials were still learning how the technology works and hadn’t made a definitive judgment on such a project.

Nonetheless, he said Resource Recovery was close to reaching a preliminary agreement with the developer.

This memorandum of understanding would establish some basic principles as well as a framework that both entities can follow as they try to cobble together a much more comprehensive written contract for a project down the road, he said.

Despite the scarcity of technical details on Jefferson’s evolving plan, critics are already taking aim. Their focus is the particular energy-producing process that project supporters call “gasification.”

“It’s a form of incineration is what it is,” said Sheila Dormody, director of Clean Water Action’s Rhode Island affiliate. “The environmental community would consider this as incineration by another name.”

Due to O’Connell’s scant technical knowledge, and the restraint of a lawyer representing the developer, Richard W. Nicholson, specific information on the type and method of gasification envisioned for the Johnston project has been limited.

O’Connell was unable to give a detailed description of the process by which trash would be rendered into a gas suitable for fueling electrical generation. But he used a technical term: “fluidized-bed gasification.”

Elsewhere in the country, including in Erie, Pa., energy developers have proposed new plants to support that type of gasification, arguing that they can convert various types of waste into energy without emitting dioxin and other pollutants associated with incineration. Incinerators are illegal in Rhode Island.

In an interview this week, Nicholson confirmed that the gasification technology for the plant would come from Energy Products of Idaho, a company that says it has installed about 100 of the “fluidized-bed” systems in plants around the globe.

The company’s Web site depicts various ways of deriving energy by burning and, in some cases, heating waste material at temperatures extreme enough to leave a charred remainder.

The same supplier is working on plans for a facility in Erie that would generate 70 megawatts of energy a day, according to an article in a local newspaper.

Nicholson confirmed that Jefferson Renewable Energy hopes to convert close to 50 percent of Rhode Island’s solid waste — about 2,000 tons a day — into 90 megawatts of renewable energy.

The plant would employ about 65 people and no tax breaks or incentives would be sought, he said.

Nicholson said the developer was working with a local public relations company, the RDW Group, to inform the public on every aspect of its proposal in the near future.

“Our mission is to keep everyone well-informed,” he said.

Nicholson said he would not provide any written description of the project because the proposal was incomplete and he wanted a representative of Resource Recovery to be on hand for any interview.

“A lot of it is intellectual property,” he said. “To share different aspects of what we’re doing — I don’t know if it would be appropriate.”

Both O’Connell and Nicholson said the gasification process they’re examining is not incineration. They said the plant would not change the type of solid waste being brought to the landfill and it would not process hazardous waste.

The plant would have to comply with the state Department of Environmental Management’s siting guidelines, as well as state regulations on emissions, O’Connell said.

A DEM spokeswoman, Gail Mastrati, said the agency has not received any plans from Jefferson.

The company was incorporated in November and its manager was designated as David J. Callahan.

Callahan, president of Palmer Paving Corp., of Palmer, Mass., is partnering with two Boston-area companies on the Erie project, according to an article in the Erie Times-News. The article likened the Erie project to a solid-waste-to-energy project in Rhode Island. Callahan did not respond to a request for comment yesterday.

A. Austin Ferland, chairman of the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Board, did not respond to a request for comment. Another member, Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, said the project could be the solution to the state’s landfill capacity problem if the company can pull it off.

“If it’s true, that’s huge for us,” he said, adding that some other members of the board had plans to visit a plant on a fact-finding mission this month.

“I know there’s nobody on the board who has opposed having the discussion,” he said.

mreynold@projo.com