In-Kleined Toward Coal
June 11th, 2008 at 10:36 am
The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), that scourge of the Hill Country, recently bought a stake in a new coal-fired power plant. Why invest in coal? LCRA Chair Rebecca Klein defended the decision in a press release thusly: “As the Central Texas economy and population continue to grow, so does the need for new sources of cleaner power.” Because for a new source of “cleaner power,” it’s hard to beat a good ol’ fashioned coal-fired power plant, right?
Klein, a Gov. Perry appointee, went on to explain that: “Adding coal-fueled base-load generation helps reduce LCRA’s reliance on power from natural gas, which has more price volatility.”
While the second sentence is true in the strictest, most bloodless accounting sense (coal is “cheaper” as long as you avoid taking into account the health effects of air pollution and the impacts of climate change), it’s hard to get around the notion that a coal-fired power station is a “new source of cleaner power.” It’s just not. The coal plant in question, a joint venture between L.S. Power and Dynegy Inc. near Waco, would emit thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide, mercury, smog-forming gases, and carbon dioxide. Locals and environmental groups bitterly oppose the plant.
Before her appointment to LCRA, Klein was mixed up in nearly every corporate energy venture around. From 2002-2004 she served on the Texas Public Utility Commission, overseeing the transition to deregulation, which has given a huge boost to coal power. In 2004, she re-branded herself “Rebecca Armendariz Klein” to run in an Hispanic congressional district against Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett. The telecom and energy sectors backed her campaign. After she lost badly, Klein went back to being simply “Rebecca Klein” and carved out a nice niche in Republican corporate, government, and non-profit circles.
Her main gig is with the Loeffler Group, a lobbying and lawyering firm headed by former Texas Congressman Tom Loeffler, who stepped down as John McCain’s finance co-chair last month. Klein is also president of RA Klein & Co., an energy, defense, and telecom consulting firm.
But Klein is also versed in making some energy outfits appear greener than they actually are.
Last year, in the heat of a grassroots movement to kill an onslaught of new coal plants in Texas, Klein launched a corporate-backed nonprofit called Power Across Texas. The group’s Web site warns ominously of “pending power shortages, the potential of rolling blackouts and the traumas associated with lack of energy supply” and calls for “environmentally sound approaches for ensuring reliable power at the lowest possible price for all Texans.”
But Power Across Texas’ allies aren’t exactly typical tree-huggers. It’s backed by the Clean Coal Technology Foundation of Texas, a group tied to Big Coal; the right-wing, anti-environment Americans for Prosperity; the Republican-oriented Hispanic Alliance for Progress; the Biodiesel Coalition of Texas; Jupiter Power Company, L.P.; and Cyclone BioEnergy LLC.
Jupiter and Cyclone are run by one Jill Warren, a principle in the Patriot Group, a profoundly ideological, Republican lobby shop with offices in Austin and Washington, D.C. Patriot Group lists Power Across Texas as one of its clients, as well as the coal-crazed Association of Electric Companies of Texas and the Hispanic Alliance for Progress.
The steering committee of Power Across Texas includes Erle Nye, the former chairman of TXU, some guy from mega-utility AEP, and that noted greenie, state Rep. Phil King (R-Weatherford), the chairman of the House Regulated Industries Committee and a proud global warming denier.
Klein is involved in another astroturf group. She serves on the steering committee of the brand new Nuclear Energy for Texans, an industry-funded “green” campaign to convince Texans that new nuclear power plants are needed. That should please her husband, Dale Klein, who heads the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency responsible for approving new nukes.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
As a partisan Democrat as well as an economist interested in this from a boring but important perspective, this story is so very scary: Faux-green and astro-turf are very effective when there is little in the way of principled opposition or practical alternatives buried in the unctious rhetoric — the “checklist liberalism” — of our new-mint Democratic Platform.
Where provisions of the Environment and Energy sections do not contradict each other, they are so vague as to provide little promise of (a) “change we can believe in” or even much basis for (b) countering what Perry, Klein, and the others cited above are up to.
Let’s be clear about that.
The GOP is protecting a legacy of Strayhorn-through-Enron-through-Perry finance-driven energy schemes based on (a) low-cost fossile fuels, (b) high-priced public power, and private application of public credit.
Sadly, Democratic office-squatters in Austin have long been utterly complicit in that, up to and including setting aside principles of common carriage that were once our party’s distinctive contribution to popular and progressive government.
And, now, as the GOP is staring at the likelyhood of losing at least control of the Texas House, not a few of them are promoting bizarre deals that could help them retire from public service very wealthy indeed. These involve “dumping” obsolete Japanese nuclear and German coal-fired boilers in Texas that cannot be built in their home countries, where more advanced technologies are being developed and deployed.
Texas Democrats could regain what was once an envious national and international reputation for leadership in energy policy by standing firm in opposition to the GOP schemes, not by wringing their hands only to negotiate settlements and set-asides with the promoters. That sort of courage is the predicate for offering exciting and practical short-term, near-term, and long-term alternatives.
Those alternatives are matters of sound public finance and bold engineering, not the crazy-ass public finance and pedestrian engineering Texas politicians of both stripes are now professionally notorious for worldwide.
The political opportunity in transformational alternatives stems from the fact that the public is really skeptical of flim-flam and enthusiastic about technology.
June 13th, 2008 at 10:03 am
i don’t know if we’ve turned a corner or entered a wormhole in san antonio. austinites may not blush at this, but our council just help an information session about several major pushes intended to shape up our sustainability profile: everything from transit to residential building codes to power production.
said one council member: “I really believe we should never build another coal plant in the City of San Antonio.”
thanks for exposing Klein on coal. i just want other power progressives out there to know there is a growing clean-energy base taking root down under.
June 13th, 2008 at 11:18 am
It’s nice to see that, since she’s not running for office and has carefully persused the demographics of LCRA’s service area, Rebecca Klein has dopped the Armendariz. It’s so inconvenient when you’re talking with those cracker coal-plant operators.