TXU Corp. has scrapped plans to build a large fleet of coal-fired power plants in Texas but hasn't altogether abandoned its expansion efforts. Instead, it hopes to build the biggest nuclear-power plants in the U.S.

TXU has shifted its focus to nuclear power at a time when three other organizations — NRG Energy Inc., Exelon Corp. and Amarillo Power — have said they, too, may build nuclear plants in Texas. If all the plans materialize, Texas could have more reactors than any other state in a decade's time, built in a deregulated market where missteps would be borne by shareholders …

Early in the coal fight in Texas, before we had many resources for legal fights, the environmental groups coordinated opposition and divided the permits among the groups. Environmental Defense took the lion share of the permits to oppose, but another group (Robertson County, Our Land, Our Lives) agreed to lead on Oak Grove.

Frankly, we and the Public Citizen group tried to get mayors from cities like Dallas to act earlier, but they did not act to oppose coal plants until the Oak Grove application was through the "State Office of Administrative Hearings" process.

The Our Land, Our Lives group continues in the same legal position as before. I have now explained this to Mayor Miller of Dallas, who is not an attorney, and she seems to understand that the TXU deal does not and could not make it harder to defeat the Oak Grove plant.

[The buyout] doesn't resolve the fundamental environmental problems that made the huge fleet of proposed coal plants so controversial across the state and the nation. Solving those would require a longer effort to make basic changes in how Texas deals with energy and the environment.

Texas will still be the largest emitter of GHG, and the deal might make it harder to fight ongoing battles with existing plants and permits in other areas.

Local battles over the three remaining new TXU coal plants and five others that other companies still could build in Texas will continue as well. In particular, TXU's proposed two-unit Oak Grove facility in Robertson County is the subject of a permit fight before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Oak Grove's two units and a new unit at TXU's Sandow plant in Milam County are the only ones the company proposed that would burn Texas lignite, the most-polluting form of coal. The others would have burned cleaner Wyoming coal. Opponents said they would continue to fight the Oak Grove permit. But Dallas Mayor Laura Miller, who is leading a coalition of cities against the new TXU plants, said the TXU deal could make it harder to defeat that plant.

Moreover, (1) TXU has committed to lowering their emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 – in other words, TXU will significantly lower emissions regardless of the type of plants they build; and (2) TXU will work to pass a national cap on greenhouse gas emissions which will make their pledged reductions mandatory.

If you ask me that’s a pretty good package.