Texas deserves better than costly, ineffective energy proposals

Right now, the Texas Legislature is considering bills that would raise Texans’ electricity costs by billions of dollars.

But those bills won’t create the grid reliability Texans need.

Texas’s energy market keeps electricity costs low. That helps bring jobs here, in part by spurring the development of nation-leading clean energy resources.

But proposals at the Capitol could wreck Texas’s market — and you’ll pay for it.

Texas needs to keep the lights on. The Texas Energy Buyers Alliance’s nearly 400 members — many of whom rank among Texas’s largest employers — prioritize reliability above all else.

But Texas can improve reliability without attacking clean energy and prohibitively raising the cost of electricity in this state.

Texas’s economic miracle is due in part to low-cost, clean energy. If we want the miracle to continue, we need to improve reliability, add dispatchable generation and control costs. We can do that by continuing to blaze Texas’s transformational, nation-leading clean energy path.

These goals are not mutually exclusive.

State leaders cannot slow renewable energy without hurting consumers, employers and the economy — there is just no way to do it.

Some businesses are already pausing investments in Texas to wait and see how the dust settles. If businesses feel uncertain about investing here, then Texas’s economic miracle is under threat.

The Legislature should strengthen our open energy market without discriminating against vital clean energy resources — and without picking winners and losers among the range of technologies Texas needs to power its future.

One proposal now under consideration would spend well over $10 billion — even as much as $18 billion — on at least a dozen new gas plants that would be used only in rare emergencies. Those costs will be paid by Texans through tax revenue or higher power bills.

Another would increase the cost of clean energy by billions of dollars through a new so-called firming product. This proposal would effectively make customers double-pay for energy, forcing renewable energy generators to buy electricity from other power plants. These costs will either put generators out of business or be passed directly on to customers’ bills — without creating new energy resources.

Throughout this conversation, legislators have expressed their intent to force solar and wind power plants to pay for all upgrades and improvements to the system. Some legislators are even contemplating a new “Permitting Division” within the Public Utility Commission, dedicated to permitting only solar and wind generators. This would dramatically increase the scope of government and intrude into contracts entered into by private landowners.

Taken together, all of these bills would devastate rural communities and landowners that depend on the investment and income renewable energy provides. They also would make Texas far less attractive to employers who want to locate in places that are on the vanguard of energy innovation, where customers can truly choose the energy they want.

And these bills would make energy far more expensive — without increasing reliability.

These proposals and others are built on a misdiagnosis of Texas’s energy challenges. Blaming renewable energy for Texas’s challenges is dangerously disingenuous. Discriminating against renewables only taxes Texas families, employers and other ratepayers.

Instead, Texas needs a much faster, stable, and more affordable path to reliability. That includes immediate and long-term market-driven strategies that will slow power plant retirements and create market-driven incentives for the wide range of generation sources Texas needs.

We urge lawmakers to pursue solutions that improve reliability without attacking clean energy and raising the cost of electricity in Texas.