EDITORIAL: Good Job, Tex: Texas Utility Backs Away From Dirty Coal

By The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Feb. 28–Even by standards of the Lone Star State, the announcement last year that a Texas utility planned to build 11 coal-fired power plants was breathtaking in its largeness. The TXU Corp., with the blessing and encouragement of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, said it wanted to build the 11 plants by 2011 to create 9,100 megawatts of electricity and haul in a reported $1 billion in extra profits each year.

There was only one problem: If built, those 11 plants would have added to Texas’ air pollution problems and spewed an extra 78 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That tonnage would have dwarfed the greenhouse gases California plans to eliminate by 2011, and it would have made Texas, with its oil refineries and lax environmental laws, a national pariah in the fight against global warming.

With Perry issuing an order to speed up the permitting of power plants, TXU seemed to face no roadblocks.

Then everything changed. Environmentalists protested. So did national investor groups, Dallas’ mayor and Southern Baptists. In September, California passed laws to fight global warming and block coal power from being imported into the state. In November, the Democrats took control of Congress. Two months later, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its strongest report yet detailing the threats and causes of global warming.

On Sunday, all of those events culminated in the decision by TXU to abandon eight of the 11 coal-fired power plants as part of a $45 billion buyout by a team of private equity investors. TXU’s new owners still plan to build three of the plants, but they have committed to reducing the utility’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 by investing more in wind power and energy efficiency.

While it might take some time to see if TXU meets its new commitments, the announced sale of the company has jolted the energy industry. Stock prices for Peabody Energy and Arch Coal — two companies expected to provide coal for the Texas plants — dropped sharply Monday. In their strongest terms yet, public interest groups have sent a message that investments in dirty energy are not only irresponsible, they carry a huge financial risk.

This message needs to resonate here in California. Despite its support for conservation and alternative energies, the state — largely because of its municipal power agencies — still imports about 20 percent of its electricity from coal-fired plants.

There may come a day when coal power can improve its image by sequestering carbon dioxide and eliminating mercury and other air pollutants. That day has not yet come. Until it does, everyone who has a stake in power generation needs to look to alternatives and not repeat the mistakes of the Lone Star State.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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