Apr. 21--DALLAS -- To combat Texas' expensive vulnerability to natural gas prices, TXU Corp. unveiled a $10 billion plan Thursday to add 11 coal-fired electricity-generating plants.

The plan would add 8,600 megawatts of electricity to the 18,300 megawatts already in TXU's generating arsenal and more than double its coal-fired power. Of TXU's current capacity, 5,837 megawatts is coal-fired. An additional 2,300 megawatts comes from TXU's nuclear plant at Glen Rose. The rest is generated from natural gas.

The announcement came four days after unexpected hot weather forced rolling blackouts throughout the state and highlighted the dwindling reserve power on the state's grid. It also comes after two years of dramatic electricity price increases for consumers.

TXU Chairman John Wilder said his plan to more than double the utility's coal-fired electrical generation would "get Texas' electricity generation away from its heavy reliance on natural gas." He even broached the idea of a nuclear plant, although that would be years down the road.

Electricity rates have doubled in Texas since the state deregulated its electricity service in 2002. Utilities have blamed high natural gas costs, which have quadrupled since 2000, for the problem because more than 70 percent of the state's electricity now comes from gas-fired generators. Nationally, about 45 percent of electricity comes from gas generation.

The new generation will come from a previously announced, 1,600- megawatt plant to be built near Kosse in Robertson County and expansions of its coal-fired plants at Sandow east of Austin; the Big Brown plant near Fairfield in Freestone County; the Martin Lake plant east of Kilgore; the Morgan Creek plant west of Abilene; the Tradinghouse plant east of Waco; and the Valley 4 plant near Bonham on the Oklahoma border.

Those plants will require a huge influx of coal brought into Texas from Wyoming to supplement the East Texas lignite that for generations has been the fuel base for much of TXU's generating fleet.

Wilder and Gov. Rick Perry, who attended a news briefing at the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, said Texas faces a potential electricity shortfall as early as 2010. Perry described the temporary rolling blackouts that hit Texas during the unexpected heat wave Monday as "a wake-up call that we need more generation."

Although the 52,000 megawatts of demand load Monday should have been within the capacity of Texas' 63,000-megawatt generating system, more than 14,000 megawatts were offline Monday for normal maintenance during what is normally mild April weather. The 101- degree temperatures caused an August-like surge of air-conditioning use that forced the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to order temporary blackouts over most of Texas until the late-afternoon crisis had passed.

Wilder said that the extra generating capacity would save Texans at least $1.7 billion annually in fuel bills because more electricity would be available and thus would be cheaper. He also said that emission-control technology has reached a level that, even with the addition of the new plants, the company would actually reduce coal emissions by 20 percent of where they are today.

"The new plants will have among the lowest sulfur, nitrogen oxide and mercury emission rates in the nation and will be 80 percent cleaner than the average U.S. coal plant," TXU said in a prepared statement.

The permitting process through the Texas environmental agencies could be contentious if environmentalists object.

But Perry, asked whether there was an understanding that the state would grant approval of the coal-fired generating expansion, said, "We're not going to let bureaucrats jerk us around."

Clean-air advocates were less than impressed with the plan. Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of the Texas chapter of Public Citizen, called the proposed power units a "massive assault on our air quality."

"TXU is already the state's largest industrial air polluter, and their smog emissions threaten the health of every citizen in the Metroplex," Smith said.

Wendi Hammond, executive director of the Dallas-based Blue Skies Alliance, questioned the pollution reductions TXU has committed to at its existing plants, noting that the company provided few details as to when these improvements would be made.

"We need [the reductions] now, not in 2010," Hammond said.

If the nine-county Dallas-Fort Worth region fails to meet federal ozone standards by 2010, it faces severe federal sanctions, including mandatory emissions caps that could hamper economic development, and the loss of tens of millions in federal highway dollars a year.

Wilder said TXU would spend $500 million in the first phase on new environmental-control equipment and $2 billion later on new technologies and, perhaps, nuclear power.

"Nuclear power will remain an option in the future," Wilder said. "But the lead time for a new nuclear plant is 10 years or more. We don't have that much time."

ERCOT, which operates the state's electricity-transmission grid, has warned that the state's reserve of generation capacity over demand would dwindle from more than 20 percent at the beginning of this decade to virtually nothing by 2010 if new generation is not brought online.

Wilder asserted that the TXU plan announced Thursday would make Texas' electricity-generation capacity sufficient through 2015. The state is expected to have about 65,000 megawatts of generation online by 2010. Texas went through a binge of generation building in the last half of the 1990s, adding 70 new natural gas-fired generating plants. That was expected to carry the state through the early part of the new century at relatively low cost.

But Wilder noted that natural gas prices have quadrupled since 2000 and are unlikely to return to their historically low levels of before 2000. Perry said that Texas will have 6 million new residents in the next decade and that growth must be met with more electricity capacity.

Staff writer Scott Streater contributed to this report.

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Dan Piller, (817) 390-7719 danpil@star-telegram.com