Mike Conaway: “Texas Utilities announced that they were going to build, I think the number was 12, 300-megawatt coal fire plants in…”

“Texas Utilities announced that they were going to build, I think the number was 12, 300-megawatt coal fire plants in Texas. And the reason for that was that over in that time frame of construction, the demand in Texas was expected to increase, electricity demand was expected to increase to the point that our grid, ERCOT, which is separate from the rest of the United States, the differential between demand and supply would narrow to a margin that is unacceptable from a safety standpoint. And these 12 plants were going to help keep that margin at the 9 or 10 or 12 percent excess capacity to allow for spurts in daily demand or to allow for continued growth in demand without getting to a point where you turned the light on and it didn't work, the experience in California where they had brown-outs because supply outstripped demand. You mentioned earlier about the opponents to coal fire plants. They went to work, Texas Utilities, to demand that they not build those plants. And as a result of that, and a takeover by a private entity, eight or nine of those plants have now been scrapped and they're only going to build three. Now, what got lost in that conversation was, where is the extra electricity production going to come from in order to keep ERCOT at a margin of safety for the differential between supply and demand that it has had over these years and should have in the going-forward future.”