Noticed all of the recent TXU Advertising ?

Letter to the Editor

The recent spate of full-page TXU ads in the Star-Telegram try to hide the facts about the utility's motivation for the rush to build more dirty, coal-burning power plants. To focus on one plant, TXU Corp. and Alcoa Inc., the aluminum manufacturer, have formed a business partnership to provide low-cost electricity to power Alcoa's very energy-intensive smelter near its Rockdale facility.

It's bad enough that the scheme would let Alcoa buy power year-round from TXU's on-site coal-burner at a huge discount when the rest of the state will see skyrocketing electricity costs.

But to add insult to injury, Alcoa will be able to generate massive profits during daily peak-load periods, those hot summer afternoons and evenings when electric utilities are stretched close to capacity. Simply by exercising its option to buy the maximum allowable power available from TXU, a simple paper transaction would allow it to resell that power at peak-load rates to the retail electric providers and their customers at peak retail prices.

Alcoa pulled this trick during the rolling blackouts several years ago on the West Coast. Its potential profits were so great that it laid off all its employees with full pay, shut down the smelter operation and sold all the power it could buy under its existing long-term contract with huge Columbia River hydropower generators to electricity providers that were desperate for power to keep their customers from brownouts. Alcoa's profits were estimated to be millions per week from the resale -- all legal.

And now that the 2005 Energy Policy Act allows virtually any corporation to become an "electric utility," we are vulnerable to the same scam here in Texas. And if Perry allows TXU to continue with its plan to build its new coal-burners across the state, the TXU-Alcoa sweetheart deal will be consummated. Texas electricity ratepayers get to subsidize Alcoa, we get higher electricity rates to pay for the new power plants, and the state will allow increased air pollution on top of it all.

Jim Duncan, North Texas Renewable Energy Inc., Fort Worth

source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/local2/15498522.htm