Skyonic lands investment & partnership with TXU

Texas energy company TXU (NYSE: TXU) has reached an agreement with and made a minority investment in Skyonic, a privately-held Austin, Texas-based emissions recovery company.

"Though economical technology to capture CO2 does not exist today, we are making investments like this to support development of emission reduction technologies and help them become a reality in the future," said Mike McCall, Chief Executive Officer, TXU Wholesale.

TXU's agreement with and investment in Skyonic will help fund a field-test of the technology at a TXU facility to further develop and evaluate Skyonic's SkyMine™ process to capture CO2 and apply it to commercial uses.

Through a chemical process, the SkyMine process turns power plant emissions into commercial-grade chemicals, such as hydrogen, chlorine and carbonates (a solid form of carbon).

TXU previously announced it is investing up to $2 billion to commercialize state-of-the-art clean technologies. This includes forming a fund that will make up to $200 million in energy-related investments and invest in next-generation technology, like enhanced retrofit technology, the potential development and commercialization of Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) technology, and evaluating new nuclear generation - the only scalable, CO2-free source of power generation.

The companies plan to install a test facility at TXU's Big Brown facility in Central Texas in January of 2007. If the results warrant, a larger "pilot scale" facility may be developed as the relationship matures.

TXU Corp., a Dallas-based energy company, manages a portfolio of competitive and regulated energy businesses primarily in Texas.