It's too soon to be celebrating a new day in Western energy policy — but we like the way at least some denizens of corporate executive suites have been thinking lately:

Sithe Global Power, the outfit whose plans for the Desert Rock coal-fired power plant on the Navajo Nation have been put on hold by the federal government, has changed its mind about using coal to produce steam at a proposed plant in southeastern Nevada. Instead, the company wants to burn natural gas — and use photovoltaic solar cells for 50 to 100 megawatts' worth of electricity from its Toquop operation.

The Sierra Club is applauding that shift, noting that thousands of Nevadans and Utahns would be spared the health effects of coal-burning — not to mention its mining and disposal. Might the Desert Rock project undergo a revision?

Clean as natural gas may be as a combustible, however, the country is slowly becoming aware of the environmental effects of an increasingly popular way of producing it: hydraulic fracturing — "fracking," as New Mexicans have come to know it. This is a process by which water, sand and chemicals are forced into the ground to push out the gas.

Thus the sudden concern on the part of many Santa Fe County residents in late 2007 and early 2008 when gas producers announced that they had designs on the Galisteo Basin. Our area has darn little water in the first place — and what water we do have shouldn't be tainted by the toxic compounds that would be blasted into the aquifers.

In Washington, Reps. Maurice Hinchey of New York and Barbara DeGette of Colorado have introduced a bill by which drillers would have to disclose what chemicals they're using. And for good measure, it would apply Safe Drinking Water Act standards to the process.

We can't tell you what we're using say the gas-and-oil companies; those are trade secrets. Well, Congress should tell the drillers, whatever the chemicals are, they're suspect in several water-pollution cases — so keep 'em as secret as you want; just stop fracking until you can prove it's safe ...

Gulp.

If that bill becomes law, it'll gladden the hearts of the coal industry, which, The Associate Press reports from Denver, is under a growing challenge from gas.

The Colorado Legislature is moving on bills requiring that state's largest utility to switch over to gas or other alternatives — or, at the very least to retrofit its smokestacks with effective air-cleaning technology. The bill has passed the Colorado House, but Gov. Bill Ritter and Senate leaders have postponed debate.

The power company, called Xcel, appears to be responsive to the idea. The coal folks and their unions, though, are fighting it — mainly through $2 million worth of advertising warning of higher energy prices. Sounds as if they don't believe their own propaganda about "clean coal."

Or maybe it's politicians and policymakers who aren't buying it.

It isn't as if Western coal can't be — and isn't being — exported to many parts of the word, near and far.

But the United States appears to be increasingly serious about cleaner fuels — and no fuels at all; it'll take time for solar, geothermal, wind and hydropower to dominate our market, so gas, under strict extraction regulations, beats coal for now.