Energy Future Holdings Holding Off on Greenhouse Gas Strategy
By Elizabeth Souder, The Dallas Morning News
Mar. 18–Dallas power company Energy Future Holdings isn’t yet working on a strategy to deal with potential greenhouse gas regulations.
“How can the former TXU Corp. come up with a strategy, when no one knows how or when the federal government will regulate carbon dioxide?” asked board member William Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, adding that any regulations probably won’t kick in until around 2011.
“I don’t know how it’s going to shake out. You can’t really come up with a strategy here,” Mr. Reilly said on a conference call Tuesday with reporters.
“It will be well into the next [presidential] administration before anything obligates the company to alter its behavior,” he said
Energy companies are grappling with how to brace for regulations that could require them to buy credits to cover greenhouse gas emissions or install expensive and, in some cases, experimental, equipment to eliminate such emissions. Most observers say such regulations are certainly on the way.
Anticipating new regulations, other power companies in recent years have announced strategies to use fuels that don’t emit carbon dioxide. Energy Future Holdings, on the other hand, is building three coal-fired power plants, the most carbon-intensive type of power plant available, and hasn’t moved forward on plans to build more carbon-free nuclear reactors or cleaner coal plants.
That doesn’t mean Energy Future is ignoring the issue. The company announced on Tuesday a new Sustainable Energy Advisory Board of eight prominent business, environmental and energy leaders to help make environmental decisions.
The company has also applied for membership to the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which supports regulation of greenhouse gases by requiring emitters to buy a limited number of credits corresponding to carbon dioxide emissions.
It all depends on how Congress chooses to allocate those credits, Mr. Reilly said. If companies that emit carbon dioxide get credits for all of their current emissions, those companies face a much different decision than if they don’t get any free credits at all.
Mr. Reilly pointed out that Energy Future already buys more wind power than anyone else in Texas, and is installing solar panels at some schools. Plus, Energy Future is considering building more nuclear plants, and has asked power plant manufacturers to bid on the building of two clean coal plants that could capture and store carbon dioxide emissions.
He said Energy Future Chief Executive John Young will make a presentation to the new sustainable energy board on the various technologies.
“We will get into all of the obvious choices that the company has and look at the environmental attractiveness or consequences, the economics, the social impacts, that some of these choices have, and give some of our views on how to proceed,” Mr. Reilly said.
The advisory board’s advice will be confidential, and will be intended only for members of the Energy Future Holdings board. The company may take the advice or disregard it.
Energy Future will pay members of the new sustainable advisory board $10,000 a year, plus expenses. The board will meet four times a year.
Two board members, Texas Secretary of State Phil Wilson and the regional director of Environmental Defense Fund, Jim Marston, won’t take the money. Mr. Marston asked Energy Future to give the fee to a charity, the Central Texas Clean Air Force.
Other board members are:
-Ralph Cavanagh, co-director of Natural Resources Defense Council’s Energy Program
-Reginald Gates, president of the Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce
-Karen Johnson, chief executive of United Ways of Texas
-Sam Jones, former chief executive of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas
-Steven Specker, chief executive of the Electric Power Research Institute
-A member to be named in consultation with the Texas Association of Manufacturers
Mr. Reilly will be chairman of the advisory board.
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