No guarantees that IGCC technology works? Not true!

GE Energy, which pioneered coal gasification 30 years ago, decided in 2004 that IGCC was a moneymaker—if only someone could "guarantee" that the technology worked. That year GE acquired Chevron-Texaco's coal-gasification business, and now it offers turnkey coal-gasification plants—with warranties.

"Before, companies would give you a book 1 1/2-in. thick, describing gas flows in the system so you'd build your own and, if it didn't work, you were liable," says Edward Lowe, GE's Houston-based general manager of gasification.

Now GE offers to take on responsibility for everything "from coal off the coal pile to electrons on the grid."

AEP and Duke Energy are in the process of design work on three new IGCC plants in Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana, with GE and Bechtel.—by Cathy Booth Thomas, TIME Inside Business

Texas's big global warming battle

In this era of corporate environmentalism, big companies like General Electric, Wal-Mart and McDonald's have grown accustomed to working closely with save-the-earth groups like the World Resources Institute, Conservation International, even Greenpeace.

And then there's TXU.

The battle between TXU and its opponents will be an interesting test of public sentiment about the issue of climate change in a state that, unlike California and New York, has taken the position that government action to curb global warming is unnecessary. Texas generates about 10 percent of the nation's CO2 emissions, more than any other state.—by Marc Gunther, senior writer, Fortune magazine

$1.2 Billion for depressed freeway?

Depressed is the operative word here. Read this from the Dallas Morning News--

The Texas Department of Transportation announced plans in 1987 to build a pair of five-mile, three-lane tunnels about 100 feet below the LBJ Freeway surface. And while those tunnels technically remain an option, their cost has forced the state to reconsider.

The backup plan: An open channel similar to depressed sections of Central Expressway.

The open channel would run five miles in the median area of LBJ and would sit about 25 feet below existing lanes. Like the tunnels, the channel would provide three new lanes in each direction that motorists would have to pay to use. Construction could begin in mid-2008, and all lanes should open by the end of 2013, Mr. Hudspeth said.

Whatever the approach, something must be done soon to improve traffic on a highway that handles 262,000 vehicles a day near Preston Road, said Kathy Ingle, a community leader who has taken an active role in the LBJ discussions.

"We no longer have the option of discussing this indefinitely," she said. "For the mobility of North Texas, we have to get this done."