Nattering Nabobs of No Electricity
September 1, 2006
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Posted by Aubrey Turner
Just as we finally conclude a long run of sweltering days, complete with record power usage, Mayor Mommy and friends come out to obstruct TXU’s plans to construct new power plants.
Voicing concern about air quality and global warming, Mayor Bill White and other top city officials in Texas announced Thursday that they will fight plans to build more than a dozen coal-burning power plants across the state.
The Texas Cities for Clean Air Coalition, spearheaded by Dallas Mayor Laura Miller, hopes to encourage companies planning to build those plants to use cleaner technologies, such as natural gas, to run the plants and meet the state’s power needs.
I have zero tolerance for this kind of nonsense. TXU is taking steps to make these new plants cleaner than the old ones, but it never seems to be enough for some people. The minute you mention coal they lose their minds. They also whine and make noises about “affordable” options, but they’ve taken the most affordable one off the table. Ultimately, if they get their way, not only will TXU be delayed in building power plants, but they’ll likely be more costly to build and more costly to operate, which translates as even higher rates. Doesn’t sound very “affordable” to me. And along the way their obstructionist delays could force us past the point where ERCOT has to institute rolling blackouts to save the grid. We came within a couple of hundred megawatts of that point this summer.
Anyhow, here’s my statement on the issue: If next summer, or the following one, I’m sitting around sweltering due to rolling blackouts because TXU couldn’t build the needed plants, I may start conducting experiments to see if burning environmentalists would work for generating power. 
Categories: Politics
Of course, these same people would object to building another nuke plant too. I oppose building more coal plants, but mainly because we should be building two more nuke plants instead of 12 more coal plants.
I’m not opposed to burning fossil fuels—I just want efficiency. New coal plants are efficient enough to actually sell pollution credits back to older plants, but they still aren’t as clean or cheap as a nuke plant. Nukes and hydro for base load and wind and natural gas for peak. (Wind and hydro terrain permitting, of course.)
Politics, unfortunately, trumps common sense. Politics, to utter dismay, lags common sense by 10 years, at best. I’m sure opinions will change when oil is > $100 per barrel.
Glad I’ve got a high-efficiency AC.
I don’t mind nukes, either. But it takes so long to build them that we have to do something in the interim, so if TXU wants to build coal, I say more power to ‘em (
).
TXU announced yesterday that they are looking at building more nukes, but that they’d still need the coal plants in the interim (it will take them a year just to prepare the NRC application paperwork for adding another reactor at Commanche Peak).
David,
I’ve been looking at the high-efficiency stuff, and the Carrier Infinity looked good in energy usage. I know that I’d save money in the long term, but coughing up $7K up front is a bit tough.
Laura Miller sent a plea to all local governments earlier this summer. She wants us to gang up on TXU, and oh-by-the-way, chip in $10,000 each for her lobbying efforts. She wants to hire some experts to say how bad these coal plants are.
Mayor Tandy had conversations with each council member ‘bout a month ago. She brought up Mayor Miller’s proposal, making clear that she’d entertain supporting it. My response was mostly jurisdictional: what does the city of Dallas, much less Keller, have to do with this? No one elected me to harrumph about TXU plants which are 150 miles away, and are already regulated by the State and the Feds. And certainly no one authorized me to hand their tax dollars to Laura Miller.
Jim,
The jurisdiction issue occurred to me as I was yelling at the TV this morning when I saw Miller’s speech at this press conference.
Unfortunately, despite her lack of jurisdiction, she can make a lot of noise and cause TXU to have to spend time, money, and energy fighting legal and P.R. battles. It’s too bad TXU won’t be able to charge Miller and her band of busybodies for the extra cost of all this nonsense. Instead, *we* will all end up paying for it.
Thanks for your part in keeping Keller out of this thing, though.