A Charlotte green technology company this morning was awarded as much as $11.7 million in state and local incentives for adding 250 jobs at its lithium ion battery plant in Cabarrus County.

The Economic Investment Committee at the N.C. Commerce Department unanimously approved the incentive award to Celgard in exchange for creating manufacturing jobs that pay an average wage of $37,912, above the county average. Gov. Bev Perdue is scheduled to make the jobs announcement at 10 a.m. in Concord, where Celgard is opening its facility to make membranes used in lithium-ion batteries.

Public officials are touting the Celgard expansion as the kind of development that will help establish North Carolina as a green energy hub. U.S Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, N.C. Department of Commerce Secretary Keith Crisco and other officials are expected to join Perdue at the facility's dedication ceremony.
 
Celgard, a division of the Charlotte-based Polypore International, now stands to receive as much as $21 million in state and local incentives for adding 539 jobs at the plant. The company qualified for up to $9.2 million in grants and incentives last year for a previous expansion at the Concord factory just north of Charlotte and about 150 miles west of Raleigh.

The announcements over the last week by Facebook and Infocrossing are further proof that the state's efforts to lure more data center projects to North Carolina appear to be working.

A key part of that effort is a bill passed by state lawmakers this summer that gives tax breaks to companies building large data centers in the state. 

The law grants an exemption for taxes on electricity and business property if a company invests at least $250 million for land and construction over five years.

Figuring out how much Facebook -- or any other company investing more than $250 million -- will benefit from the bill is tricky because not all of the social networking site's $450 million investment will qualify for the exemption.

But the state's Fiscal Research Division did put out a report estimating that the total cost of the bill would be $31.6 million over the next five years.