TXU fights for 11 new coal plants

[peejay 327]

TXU fights for 11 new coal plants

By R.G. RATCLIFFE and MARK BABINECK

2007 Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN — Two-hundred dozen breakfast tacos arrived early at the Texas Capitol on opening day this year, waiting to fill the mouths of lawmakers and aides with almost $6,000 worth of tortillas stuffed with eggs and appreciation.

"Good Mornin' Y'all. Welcome back 2007. Thank you for your tireless dedication and service to Texas!" said a flier that accompanied the tacos. "Compliments of your friends at TXU."

It was the opening salvo in what is likely to become this year's most expensive lobby battle as TXU Corp. fights to build 11 coal-fired electric plants costing an estimated $10 billion.

But the opposition in this fight is not just the usual array of environmentalists who say TXU wants to pollute Texas. It also includes prominent Democratic and Republican businessmen in the state as well as the natural gas industry.

"We are a little surprised. ... We didn't expect this much (opposition)," said TXU spokeswoman Kim Morgan. "We thought we had a good, positive program to put forward."

More than $7 million combined is expected to be spent on lobbying, lawyers and advertising before a final decision is made on whether the state should permit construction of the plants.

TXU argues the extra capacity, supplied by modern designs that are far cleaner than most existing coal plants, is needed to ensure the state has enough electricity by the end of the decade.

Unusual allies

Joining the fight alongside environmentalists — and stirring the high-dollar battle royale unfolding in Austin — are a combination of North Texas businessmen who fear increased pollution will prompt onerous clean-air regulation, and a natural gas industry that doesn't want to lose its majority share of the state's electric generation.

Opponents were bolstered Friday by a report that concluded the plants would slightly increase smog in Dallas-Fort Worth — already considered in nonattainment of National Ambient Air Quality Standards — and would push Waco into nonattainment.

Morgan dismissed the findings, which were sponsored by the anti-coal Texas Clean Air Cities Coalition. She cited a prior report by the Texas Environmental Research Consortium that determined Dallas-Fort Worth would see a decrease in pollution because of its emissions reductions elsewhere.

Air-quality nonattainment could result in a loss of federal highway funds and new restrictions on the expansion of business and construction. It doesn't consider additional carbon dioxide emissions, which aren't regulated but could be in the future.

Permit status

All told, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality either has approved or is studying permits for 18 coal-fired electric-generating units. A 19th unit proposed for Corpus Christi would use coal-gasification technology, which environmentalists say is a cleaner alternative but TXU dismisses as unproven.

Hearings before administrative law judges on seven identical TXU plants are scheduled for later this month.

Those judges already have recommended that the TCEQ deny permits for two units in Robertson County in Central Texas, saying the company is unlikely to hit its emissions targets by burning notoriously dirty lignite, mined locally.

Still, nearby rancher and anti-plant activist Paul Rolke said he wouldn't be surprised if commissioners ignore the judges and permit the Oak Grove generators, which will sit on a lakeside site that TXU has waited more than three decades to develop.

"The logical extrapolation of that is that, 20 years from now, we'll look back and say, 'Geez, why did we build a bunch of century-before-last technology when we were right on the cusp of a better way to make electricity?' " said Rolke, a former Houstonian.

Morgan noted that the company would be bound by emissions limits set by the permit anyway.

The permitting process is strictly administrative and, because of lawsuits, judicial. At this point, lawmakers can only hinder the permitting, forcing the pro-coal lobby to play defense.

The focus of the Capitol fight is on a nonbinding resolution by state Rep. Charles "Doc" Anderson, R-Waco, whose HCR 43 would decelerate the permitting process. "It's a full-court press," Anderson said of the pro-coal lobby.

Currently, the process is on a six-month fast track established by an executive order that Gov. Rick Perry approved in 2005. The normal permitting process takes 18 months.

TXU has a lobby team of 27 executives and 14 hired-gun lobbyists. According to filings with the Texas Ethics Commission, the Dallas-based company is paying the lobby team between $1.4 million and $2.6 million.

Those figures do not include the cost of television advertising the company already is doing in the state's major cities.

And it also does not include lobbying efforts costing between $1.2 million and $1.9 million that are backed by coal companies, railroads and other groups affiliated with TXU's efforts to win approval of the plants. There are 26 people registered to lobby for those groups.

Nailing down the money being spent by both sides is difficult, because most of it is not publicly disclosed, flowing instead through groups that do not have to report such finances.

Backing the plants

For instance, Texans for Affordable and Reliable Power is a group of small-town officials who support the plants.

TARP Chairman and Fairfield Mayor Roy Hill said he and others spent $100,000 setting up the group but TXU has agreed to pay additional expenses.

TARP's lobbyist also is registered to work for TXU, but Hill said it is misleading to portray his group as a front for the company.

"It's a reliability issue and cheaper electricity issue for our citizens," Hill said. "I've got an obligation to my folks to make sure the light switch works and it's as cheap as possible."

TARP public relations specialist Chuck McDonald's office also is the headquarters for the Clean Coal Technology Foundation of Texas. McDonald's wife, Donna, is the executive director, and McDonald and a representative of the coal industry are registered lobbyists for the group. The foundation's Internet site and federal tax filings show it is primarily funded by coal companies and TXU.

On the opposition side, a largely anonymous group called the Texas Clean Sky Coalition recently ran full-page ads in major state newspapers criticizing the plants.

Executive Director Jackson Williams said the ads are part of a campaign that will cost in excess of $1 million to stop the plants. He declined to say who is paying for it.

Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. has acknowledged being one of the entities that helped pay for the ads. Chesapeake, the nation's third-largest natural gas producer with vast assets in Texas, favors its cleaner-burning fuel for power production.

Fueling opposition

Chesapeake has six lobbyists costing a total of $100,000, and the company's political committee donated $35,000 to state political races last year.

By comparison, TXU's political committees gave $260,000 to state and congressional candidates in Texas. TXU Chairman Emeritus Erle Nye donated an additional $252,000.

Nye has been one of Perry's largest single donors during his political career, giving the governor $178,000 since he took office. That includes $2,000 that Nye gave Perry's campaign on the same day the governor signed the executive order putting the TXU applications on the fast track, an issue raised by Democrat Chris Bell in last year's gubernatorial campaign.

The political committees of Union Pacific Railroad and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad donated a combined $647,000 to state candidates in the past election cycle.

Coal-carrying capacity

Matt Rose, chairman of Burlington Northern, told a financial conference last year that the two railroads would be the primary haulers of coal out of Wyoming to the TXU plants. He said the only question was whether the railroads would have the capacity to carry all the needed coal.

"We'll have a train that's two miles long carrying coal into Texas every day for 50 years," said James Marston, state director of Environmental Defense. "What we won't see is the train going back to Wyoming with our money in it."

The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club and Public Citizen are among several anti-coal groups that organized a rally opposing the plants at the Capitol today.

Environmental Defense has budgeted more than $1 million to fight against the permits in Texas, Marston said. About $200,000 of that will be spent on advertising.

Dallas oil and gas producer Albert Huddleston — who helped finance the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads that attacked Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004 — has formed his own coalition to oppose the TXU plants and also financed an unsuccessful lawsuit to halt the permitting process.

Mayors join battle

Dallas Mayor Laura Miller and Houston Mayor Bill White led the creation of the Texas Clean Air Cities Coalition to fight the plants.

Elena Marks, White's environmental liaison, said excess natural gas capacity and conservation can get Texas through the next few years while researchers work to perfect cleaner electricity.

"If we can't completely erase the need for additional coal plants right now, we can substantially reduce the number," she said.

Additionally, the Texas Business for Clean Air coalition based in Dallas was founded by real estate mogul Trammell Crow; Garrett Boone, chairman of The Container Store; and David Litman, chief executive of the Consumer Club Inc. Crow is a longtime financier of Texas GOP politics.

"There are some people involved in industries that would be affected, like construction. And there are some people in industries that have a competing fuel source, like natural gas," Litman said. "But most people are there because they believe it's bad for business."

Litman warned that Texas will suffer if local areas — or the entire state, in a worst-case scenario — cannot attain clear-air standards.

"The consequences are draconian. The first and most important is the loss of federal funds for highways," he said. "A construction firm may not be able to work at a time they want to. They may have to do their work at night and pay overtime."

To the contrary, TXU argues Texas business needs new generation quickly.

Its ads warn the state could begin incurring electricity shortages by 2009, and projections from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas show the power-supply comfort zone degrading by 2010.

Lobbying effort

A TXU television commercial, showing a little boy clutching a teddy bear in the warm glow of a nightlight, tells viewers the company is committed to providing "enough power to keep the monsters away."

The full extent of the lobbying effort by both sides may not yet be known because lobbyists can be hired on retainer, but they do not have to register with the Texas Ethics Commission unless they make a "direct communication" with a legislator or staff person.

The business group has hired but not registered lobbyists Al Erwin and brothers Gordon and Robert Johnson, whose late father has a building named after him in the Capitol complex.

Litman said the group had trouble finding a lobbyist because TXU had put so many on retainer.

"The whole town was hired," Litman said. "We had a hard time finding a lobbyist."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4542323.html

Related link:

http://www.cleanskycoalition.com/face_it.html

Another interesting link, "California Energy Propaganda Comes to Texas":

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=19317

[cbd2cai 0]

I think we are fighting a losing battle here!! We need more power, but the pollution in North Texas is already over the limits that the EPA have set. I can certainly tell during the summer that we are having bad Ozone Alert days. Not sure if I can handle living hear much longer since my allergies really get me on those days.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

I think we are fighting a losing battle here!! We need more power, but the pollution in North Texas is already over the limits that the EPA have set. I can certainly tell during the summer that we are having bad Ozone Alert days. Not sure if I can handle living hear much longer since my allergies really get me on those days.

Nuclear power is the clean energy solution until renewable energy matures.

[cbd2cai 0]

I think we are fighting a losing battle here!! We need more power, but the pollution in North Texas is already over the limits that the EPA have set. I can certainly tell during the summer that we are having bad Ozone Alert days. Not sure if I can handle living hear much longer since my allergies really get me on those days.

Nuclear power is the clean energy solution until renewable energy matures.

Sure it might be clean! But ppl are afraid of it and now that we have "terrorists" everywhere . . . I am sure some of these ppl think the plants will get raided and someone use the nuclear source to blow us all up!!!

On that note, I will say the TXU does have a nuclear power plant at Commanche Peak but it is the only one that I am aware of in North Texas.

Edited February 11, 2007 by cbd2cai