Aug 4 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Eric Torbenson The Dallas Morning News

A coal-fired power plant planned for Jewett, Texas, won't increase the facility's total air pollution under an agreement announced Monday between NRG Energy Inc. and two key environmental groups.

The Texas Clean Air Cities Coalition and the Environmental Defense Fund agreed not to oppose the Houston-based utility's plan to add a third coal power plant to its existing two at its Limestone Station facility. In exchange, NRG will make a series of changes to the plant that will lower its pollution.

Emissions of nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, mercury and carbon dioxide won't increase with the addition of the third unit at Limestone and will eventually drop below the 2006 levels of the two plants operating at Jewett, said a joint news release.

"This agreement presents an excellent opportunity for emission reductions," said Dallas City Council member Linda Koop, who chairs the coalition.

"The greenhouse gas reductions -- 50 percent -- are particularly significant," she said, because regulators do not consider carbon dioxide a pollutant and do not regulate or restrict carbon emissions.

The cities group most notably opposed TXU Corp.'s proposal to add 11 coal-fired plants. The group consists of representatives from cities and government agencies and had initially announced its plan to oppose the new plant at Limestone. TXU is now called Energy Future Holdings Corp. after it was taken private in 2007.

The new NRG plant will use half as much water by using advanced cooling technology. NRG also will offset half the carbon generated by the new plant "in a manner that is verifiable" to make the coal unit have a carbon footprint closer to that of a natural gas power plant, the release said.

"The Limestone expansion is part of our program to invest in Texas with a balanced portfolio of nuclear, gas, wind and coal," Thad Hill, president of NRG Texas, in the news release. His company agreed to either help build a solar-powered facility if economically feasible or contribute to a trust fund that would help energy efficiency in the state.

The utility also agreed that any future coal plants it puts in Texas will use gasification technology that lowers the amount of carbon dioxide created. It also agreed to find a way to offset at least half of the carbon dioxide emissions from that new plant.

The changes to NRG's plant mirror those made to TXU's coal plant proposals, said Jim Martson of the Environmental Defense Fund.

The difference is that TXU offset the impact of its coal plants at its other facilities, while the changes NRG made will happen at the Limestone site, east of Waco.

The NRG coal plant still faces opposition from other environmental and consumer groups, such as Public Citizen, in its effort to win a permit to operate.