Editorial: Lawmakers must defeat clean energy attacks, protect Texans

It's no wonder so many Texas lawmakers back the polluting oil and gas industry — its geysers of cash bankroll political campaigns and a state budget that relies on fossil fuels. It's harder to understand why legislators who pledge their allegiance to free market principles are trying to cripple a thriving Texas clean energy industry that creates jobs, reduces electricity bills, slashes climate-warming emissions and props up our state’s shaky electrical grid.

Yet, here we are. Bills moving through the 88th Texas Legislature contain staggeringly expensive natural gas industry giveaways that could cost Texans billions of dollars while undermining our state’s surging wind and solar industries. Legislators offering to subsidize a wealthy natural gas industry seem to be forgetting that their constituents — ordinary Texans — would be forced to pick up the tab. Lawmakers should scale these bills back or defeat them outright, and Texans should urge them to do so.

Clean energy helps keep the lights on in Texas

In an economy as big as Texas', there is plenty of room — and indeed, a need for — multiple sources of energy. Texas leads the nation in oil and gas production, but it also boasts the top spot in clean energy generation, ranking first among states in wind production and second in solar output. At the same time, soaring population growth and increasingly extreme hot and cold weather are placing unprecedented strain on our state's power grid. This demands a savvy mix of energy sources, including oil and gas, wind and solar, nuclear power and additional transmission capacity to deliver electricity to far-flung parts of the state. Instead, the GOP-controlled Texas Senate led by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has prioritized bills that prop up a Texas fossil fuel industry spewing more climate-warming carbon dioxide — by far — than any other state in the nation, while decimating clean energy production that helps stabilize the state's power grid when fossil fuel generators fail to keep up with demand. So much for letting the free market pick winners and losers.

At Patrick's urging, the Texas Senate on April 5 overwhelmingly approved Senate Bill 6, which would build 10 new natural gas plants across the state at a public cost of as much as $18 billion. The bill’s backers say the plants would be used only when the grid nears failure during times of peak energy demand, but environmental advocates worry the gas would be fired up more frequently, undercutting the need for clean energy alternatives and the industry itself.

Other legislative proposals aiming to cut clean energy production in Texas include a cap on renewable energy production, new transmission fees, requiring renewable energy companies to subsidize construction of new fossil fuel plants and the elimination of remaining state tax credits for wind, solar and other clean energy sources.

Texas House should amend or defeat deeply flawed Senate bills

It would be a shame if these legislative attacks on clean energy, the climate and the free market in Texas make it to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott, a staunch fossil fuel industry ally who would almost certainly sign them into law. With the crucial debate over the future of Texas energy policy now shifting from the conservative Senate to the more moderate Texas House, we urge a better reasoned approach that considers not just the demands of oil and gas industry lobbyists but also the potential damage to household budgets of Texans, the environment and the future of Texas energy in an age of declining oil and gas production. Rep. Todd Hunter, the Republican chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, set the right tone at an initial hearing on Texas energy market reform bills in late March.  

“The one name I never hear is the word consumer or public or the taxpayer or the ratepayer,” Hunter said of efforts to restructure Texas energy markets and stabilize the state's power grid. “Look at the impact on the public, the consumer, the ratepayer and the taxpayer.”

Texas can improve grid reliability without attacking wind and solar energy sources that are boosting our rural economies and without piling more costs onto electricity consumers and taxpayers with billions of dollars worth of new natural gas plants. Attacking a clean energy industry that has already created nearly a quarter-million jobs in Texas and counting is short-sighted, counterproductive and egregiously irresponsible considering threats to the planet from climate change. Texans must demand better, and lawmakers owe it to them to deliver.