Aug 29 - McClatchy-Tribune Business News Formerly Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Dan Piller Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

TXU Corp. on Monday stepped up a campaign to win support for its plan to build 11 coal-powered generating plants by meeting with elected officials from dozens of cities across North Texas.

TXU officials told more than 100 civic and municipal leaders that the plants, to be built in East, South and Central Texas, were needed to meet the region's growing power demands by 2010, when they would start coming online -- and wouldn't harm the environment.

Their effort was only partially successful.

Grapevine Mayor William Tate said he's not convinced that prevailing winds would push pollution from the plants to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. "And in any case, the real air pollution issue is automobiles, not generators," he said.

But Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck, who along with Dallas Mayor Laura Miller has voiced opposition to the new plants, said he was disappointed in some responses TXU officials gave to questions.

"They don't seem to recognize that carbon-dioxide emissions are a problem," Cluck said. He and others contend that TXU has not factored carbon dioxide into its emission-control plans, which TXU claims would reduce total emissions by 20 percent even after the 11 new generators come online.

"Carbon-dioxide emissions are a factor in global warming," said Cluck, a physician. "As the climate warms, we're going to see more diseases like the West Nile virus show up here as our climate becomes more tropical."

Cluck praised TXU for inviting him and other local elected officials for the information session. "I like the TXU people, they're good folks," he said. "I'm glad they had the meeting because they obviously realize that people are questioning them."

Miller echoed Cluck's concerns, saying that carbon dioxide is "a huge issue with many people." She asked why TXU can't use coal-gasification technology.

Steve Jenkins, who leads the gasification-technology team for URS Corp. and was among experts who discussed the issue before the gathering, said that only two gasification plants have been built in the United States, in Ohio and Florida. He said neither is on the scale needed to cover Texas' electricity needs.

He also said that both plants gasify Appalachian coals, which burn hotter and are more suited for the technology. TXU's proposed plants, to be built at existing TXU generating sites, would use lignite coal from nearby East Texas strip mines or a similar low-sulphur coal from Wyoming shipped by rail.

Economist Ray Perryman of Waco noted predictions that the electricity reserve margin -- the amount of electric capacity above the peak loads experienced in hot summer months -- has dropped from more than 25 percent in 2002 to 13 percent to 17 percent this year and will virtually disappear by 2010 if no new generators are built. Utility officials have said that, absent new generators, the state will be vulnerable to blackouts.

"The ultimate economic catastrophe is to not have enough electricity generation," Perryman said.

Mike McCall, head of TXU's wholesale electricity operations, said the proposal to add about 9,000 megawatts of power through the 11 coal generators is a response to the tripling of natural gas prices since Texas went on an electricity-plant building boom beginning in the mid-1990s.

"We've added about 25,000 new megawatts of generation in Texas during the last decade, and all of that is natural gas-fired," McCall said. "The rise in the price of natural gas is the reason electric rates have gone up and demonstrates a need for a diversification in our fuel mix for generation."

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