Oak Grove Plant

Luminant (formerly TXU) proposed a 1720 MW supercritical, lignite-coal-burning plant (technically, two plants) in Franklin, TX. Engineering and construction have been contracted to Fluor. In Feb. 2007, two private equity firms bought out TXU and promised to drop eight of eleven proposed coal plants in Texas; the Oak Grove plant is one of three coal plants still being pursued by the company.

In Aug. 2006, state administrative judges recommended denial of Oak Grove's permit based on doubts about the adequacy of pollution controls, but the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (whose three-member decision-making body was appointed solely by Gov. Perry, a long-time TXU campaign-cash beneficiary) approved the plants on June 13, 2007. Fluor was awarded notice to proceed with construction on June 21.

On July 21, 2008, the Fifth District Court of Appeals ruled to uphold the District Court's decision denying CleanCOALition and Robertson County: Our Lands, Our Lives' air permit challenge. The environmental groups argued that the permit violated the Clean Air Act (CAA) because it failed to adequately include a Best Available Control Technology (BACT) analysis. The final air permit for the plant is now being appealed.

As of October 2009, Oak Grove unit 1 was scheduled for completion by the end of the year, and unit 2 was expected to be complete in mid-2010.

On December 28, 2009, Luminant announced that it had put the first of the two new units online. As of June, 2010, both units were operational.

Project Details
Sponsor: Luminant (formerly TXU) Location: Franklin, TX Capacity: 1720 MW Type: Supercritical Projected in service: 2010 Status: Operating

Financing

 * Citigroup
 * Credit Suisse
 * Goldman Sachs
 * JP Morgan Chase
 * Merrill Lynch
 * Morgan Stanley

Citizen Groups

 * Stop the Coal Plant
 * Sustainable Energy & Economic Development Coalition, Karen Hadden, karen [at] seedcoalition.org
 * Texas Sierra Club, Neil Carman, neil_carman [at] greenbuilder.com
 * Texas Public Citizen, jcarraway [at] citizen.org

Employment
A 2011 Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies report, "A Fraction of the Jobs" found that coal-fired power plants underestimate jobs by more than half. The analysis looked at the six largest new coal-fired power plants to come online between 2005 and 2009, including Oak Grove Plant, and combed through each project’s initial proposals and job projection data, including public statements, published documents and other material. They then compared hat data to actual employment — before, during and after construction — in the areas where the projects were built, relying chiefly on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.

They found that only a little over half - or 56 percent - of every 1,000 jobs projected, appeared to be actually created as a result of the coal plants’ coming online. In four of the six counties, the projects delivered on just over a quarter of the jobs projected. Only one county, the Walter Scott unit number 4 project in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, saw an increase in construction employment that was roughly commensurate with the numbers predicted before the project there got under way.

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Coal plant litigation
 * Texas and coal
 * United States and coal
 * Carbon Capture and Storage
 * Existing U.S. Coal Plants
 * US proposed coal plants (both active and cancelled)
 * Coal plants cancelled in 2007
 * Coal plants cancelled in 2008
 * State-by-state guide to information on coal in the United States (or click on the map)