Word: mccalls
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Over the next 25 years, the Department of Energy predicts the use of coal will provide an increasing portion of our power--up to nearly 60%, from 52%. Convened by the Secretary of Energy, the National Coal Council (McCall is a member) has laid out an aggressive energy plan using coal over the next two decades. Coal production is expected to soar from 1.1 billion tons a year to 1.8 billion--mostly from the West, especially Wyoming's Powder River Basin. New transmission lines, like the $6 billion Frontier Line, will carry electricity from the coalfields of Wyoming to consumers...
...Mike McCall knew at age 14 he wanted to work in the mines. Chalk it up to a fascination with those "big Tonka toys" used to haul away coal, he says. He wasn't afraid to be underground, either. One of his first engineering jobs was in Peabody's famous Mine No. 10, a massive seam running beneath Illinois. Today, old enough to have a teenage son of his own, he still mines coal, but for a different boss. He is spearheading the largest expansion of coal-fired electric plants in Texas history for energy giant TXU. "With 6 million...
...McCall, as TXU's head of wholesale operations, says he needs a low-cost, reliable supply of electricity fast. Plans for nuclear facilities will take nearly a decade to develop. Coal is quicker. Using the company's new "lean academy" philosophy (based on Toyota's manufacturing system), TXU can build all 11 coal-fired plants, cookie-cutter style, with the first online in 2009. Coal gasification simply isn't in TXU's plans, primarily because of problems with the high moisture content of the cheaper Texas and Wyoming coal it buys. Waiting until the next decade, when new technologies...
...open-pit-mining operation nearby--which has scoured 15,000 acres of Texas for lignite coal over the decades--is a reclamation model, boasting ponds with bass and new woods with baby deer. "The coal plants of today are clearly not like the coal plant of yesteryear," boasts McCall...
...McCall is unapologetic about TXU's plans--and so far, the regulators are on his side. McCall wonders how anybody could oppose a plan to build 11 new plants--and retrofit old ones--while lowering overall emissions 20% (that's right, 20% below their current level). TXU would also beat by five years emissions-cap guidelines for the second phase of a federal program to reduce nitrogen oxide by 2010. "I'm worried I'm not being an effective communicator here," he says in frustration during an interview at the company's Dallas headquarters. Although it's the state...