For months, the new chairman of the Public Utility Commission, Barry Smitherman, has been telling audiences that Texas will soon need a more power plants to sustain a growing population and economy.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state's principal electrical grid, will need twice as much generating capacity by 2027 than it has now, Smitherman says. (Austin Energy and the Lower Colorado River Authority are ERCOT grid members.)

But getting those plants built and operating will be fraught with complications, which is why Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, appointed a special committee last week to study the state's growing demand for energy and how that will affect the environment.

One complication is that, under electric deregulation, most Texas utilities can no longer simply put up a new power plant and add its cost to its monthly bills. Instead, companies must risk an investment in a plant and count on power sales to cover the plant's construction and operating costs. (That's not the case for municipal utilities, such as Austin Energy, which can build the cost into rates as always.)

Another complication is which fuel to use.

Most power plants built in Texas over the past 15 years or so burn natural gas because it was relatively cheap and low polluting. But gas isn't so cheap anymore, and utility planners are leery of over reliance on one fuel.

Nuclear power does not worsen global warming, but it remains environmentally controversial with high up-front construction costs.

Coal is not popular, either. Environmentalists are critical of it as a pollutant and as a contributor to global warming. Several proposed coal plants last year ran into heavy opposition from some in the communities where they would have been built; most were canceled.

Not even nonpolluting wind turbines are immune to criticism. Lawsuits were filed last week over plans to build wind turbines in South Texas because of the danger they might pose to migrating birds.

Environmentalists say Texas should enact tougher standards for energy conservation and efficiency. Even if it does, it's hard to see how that could eliminate the need for more power plants, especially as older, less efficient (and more polluting) ones are retired, or should be.

If Craddick's new Select Committee on Electric Generation Capacity and Environmental Effects can find a path through that thicket of problems, it will be a great public service. The state will need new power plants, but the committee should treat cleaner air as an important goal, not an obstruction, and take global warming seriously.