Manufacturing construction seems poised to rise more. On Tuesday, Toyota announced it would build a $1.3 billion plant to assemble sport-utility vehicles near Tupelo, Mississippi. On Wednesday, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced the agency would invest up to $385 million in six plants to make ethanol from various sources. The total investment is expected to be at least $1.2 billion, in plants near Emmetsburg, Iowa; Colwich, Kansas; LaBelle, Florida; Corona, California; Shelley, Idaho; and Soperton, Georgia.
Electric power construction may be scaled back from previously announced growth plans. On Monday, a private-equity group announced it would buy out Texas utility TXU and cancel eight of 11 planned coal-fired plants. On Wednesday, Duke Energy announced that North Carolina utility regulators had approved only one of two coal-fired plants it sought to build and that it would await a final order and air-quality permits before deciding how to proceed. But transmission construction is growing. Engineering News-Record reported on February 19 that a new “Electricity Transmission Overview” by brokerage firm A.G. Edwards & Sons predicted, “We are in the early stages of what will likely be a multiyear build-out of the nation’s electric transmission system…” An “Energy Data Alert” issued in December by the Edision Electric Institute, the trade association for investor-owned utilities, found, “From 2006-2009, preliminary results indicate that the industry is planning to invest $31.5 billion…nearly a 60% increase over the amount invested from 2002-2005.”