Luminant Will Spend $1 Billion to Cut Emissions

By Jim Fuquay, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Feb. 19–Luminant, the power-generating unit of Energy Future Holdings, detailed a $1 billion pollution control program Monday that will outfit its older coal-fired power plants with new technology and equipment to cut emissions.

The program, announced nearly two years ago when the company was known as TXU Corp., is aimed at cutting emissions of sulfur, mercury and nitrogen oxide, or NOx, at its coal plants by 20 percent compared with 2005 levels. It also aims to offset 100 percent of those emissions from three new coal-fired plants the company has announced.

Spokesmen for two environmental groups welcomed the announcement but said they wished Luminant had made further reductions at its Big Brown coal plant in Freestone County, which is south of Dallas-Fort Worth and is a contributor to ozone in the area during warm months.

“With regard to NOx, it’s location, location, location,” said Jim Marston, regional director in Austin for Environmental Defense. “Big Brown is closer to Dallas and Fort Worth and upwind in the ozone season” and should receive the most effective emission controls, he said.

Luminant said it will install the most effective — and most expensive — nitrogen oxide technology, called selective catalytic reduction, only at its Martin Lake plant in East Texas. According to the International Energy Agency, that method cuts nitrogen oxide by 80 percent to 90 percent. By comparison, the technology planned for Big Brown, called selective noncatalytic reduction, cuts nitrogen oxide by 30 percent to 50 percent, says the Clean Coal Centre of IEA, a London-based organization of energy-consuming countries.

The same equipment at Big Brown will also be used at Luminant’s Monticello plant in East Texas, near Oklahoma.

In addition, Luminant is installing the more effective technology on its Sandow and Oak Grove coal-fired plants that are being built, along with other emission controls.

“This is the largest voluntary emissions reduction in the nation and fulfills our commitment to the state, our communities and our employees,” Mike McCall, Luminant’s chief operating officer, said in a news release. Energy Future Holdings had promised to reduce emissions as part of its buyout of TXU, completed last year. EFH canceled eight of 11 coal-fired plants that TXU had announced.

The nitrogen oxide-reduction equipment at Big Brown and Monticello should be installed by the end of 2009, said Margaret Keliher, a former Dallas County judge and executive director of Texas Business for Clean Air, a group of about 300 business leaders that support pollution controls. Members include Fort Worth investor Edward Bass and Aubrey McClendon, chairman of Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy, the most active driller in the Barnett Shale field in and around Tarrant County.

Luminant spokesman Tom Kleckner said that most of the additions should be completed by 2011 and indicated that cost was a factor in determining which technology was used.

Tom “Smitty” Smith of the Texas chapter of Public Citizen, in Austin, noted that Luminant’s efforts should be called “early rather than voluntary.” He said the state’s biggest power producer would have had to meet federal emissions requirements by 2015 at the latest anyway, but now will receive tax benefits by meeting those standards before the deadline mandated by the Clean Air Interstate Rule, issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2005.

“While Luminant is doing a good thing, there are significant economic advantages to them,” Smith said. “At Big Brown especially, we think they need to go further to reduce emissions by adding more effective pollution control.”

CUTTING POLLUTION

Luminant’s plans to reduce emissions:

Martin Lake

Opened: 1977

Location: Rusk County

Capacity: 2,395 megawatts

New controls: In-duct selective catalytic reduction to reduce nitrogen oxide; activated carbon injection to reduce mercury; coal-washing to reduce sulfur dioxide and mercury.

Big Brown

Opened: 1971

Location: Freestone County

Capacity: 1,190 megawatts

New controls: Selective noncatalytic reduction to reduce nitrogen oxide; activated carbon injection to reduce mercury; coal-washing to reduce sulfur dioxide and mercury.

Monticello

Opened: 1974

Location: Titus County

Capacity: 1,935 megawatts

New controls: Selective noncatalytic reduction to reduce nitrogen oxide; activated carbon injection to reduce mercury; coal-washing to reduce sulfur dioxide and mercury.

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