Texas Utilities: Hoping Texans Are Asleep at the Remote
by David Hamilton, Director, Sierra Club Global Warming
and Energy Programs
Last week, Texas Utilities (TXU) announced a plan to build ten new coal-fired
power plants in the state by 2010. They touted an overall reduction in "key
emissions," directly implying that the Texas environment will be better
off after they build the plants than it is now.
When I read their release, I thought that TXU must think Texans are either
completely cut off from the rest of the world or just plain stupid.
What TXU means by "key emissions" is sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides,
and toxics like mercury – pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. They
failed to mention that the TXU plants would result in a massive increase in
the state's emissions of carbon dioxide, the pollutant broadly believed by
scientists to be responsible for warming the planet and causing a host of disruptions
in the natural systems responsible for life on Earth.
The coal and utility industries are running this shell game all over the country.
They talk about "clean coal" as if global warming isn't part of the
environmental equation. Or they do a bait-and-switch. While waxing visionary
about their best technology -- coal gasification with carbon capture and storage
-- they go and do what TXU is doing, which is deploying old-world pulverized
coal technology that they can build fast and cheap.
Leading scientists like climatologist James Hansen at NASA say we must slow
and stop carbon emissions growth and start making cuts within 10 years. Meanwhile,
TXU starts a breakneck campaign to multiply them with dirty plants that will
last 70 to100 years. They're not alone. Big energy companies have proposed
more than 130 new coal-fired power plants nationwide. The Goddard Space Center
estimates that if 70 are built, they will wipe out half of the carbon emissions
reductions the rest of the world is expected to achieve through the Kyoto Treaty.
TXU is in for about 14 percent of that all by itself.
TXU could have argued that global warming isn't a legitimate consideration.
Instead, they ignored it and assumed that nobody would notice -- as if Texas
didn't take Hurricane Rita in the teeth last year and isn't still sitting at
the business end of an overheated Gulf of Mexico. They could even have followed
the main ostriches in Congress and claimed that it's all a big hoax.
But they didn't because Big Coal and TXU not only know that global warming
is real, but that regulation is only a matter of time. Now the race is on from
sea to shining sea to get as many coal plants in the ground before global warming
legislation can reach a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the U.S. Senate -- the
cost to our planet and future generations be damned.
If polluters must foot the bill for global warming, coal-fired electricity
pales in comparison to cheaper, cleaner alternatives like energy efficiency.
Then even the most fiscally challenged regulators will realize that the smarter
and cheaper move for Texans and all Americans is to tap into our vast supply
of energy waste and prevent the need for hundreds of new power plants rather
than slap up new dirty ones as fast as we can.
But the eyes of Texas are open wider than ever. Texans can now look on the
evening news and see melting glaciers, forests under assault from new insect
predators, and more intense hurricanes for themselves. Two weeks ago, the cover
of Time magazine carried the advice that we all should be very worried about
global warming. TXU hopes you aren't watching.
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