Texas Republicans Want Even More Fossil Fuels on the Grid

Texas Republicans are messing with the state’s grid to satisfy their political ambitions. Again.

Ahead of the 2023 legislative session, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has made it clear that considered one of his priorities for the upcoming 12 months is growing pure fuel manufacturing to, supposedly, stabilize the grid. Patrick has informed a number of media retailers in latest weeks that he’ll push this spring for the legislature to kind a plan to construct extra pure fuel vegetation—probably forcing renewables suppliers to assist foot the invoice.

“We still need more power. We just have to do that. We have plenty of cheap, natural gas under the ground,” he stated in an interview with KXXV this week as he mentioned the reforms to the Texas grid . “Renewables are fine. They help the environment, help lower the cost of energy, but we don’t have enough dispatchable power. That means when we turn on the light switch, the lights come on. When you turn on your AC or furnace, it comes on because it’s reliable.”

There are some actual conversations available round ensuring the grid is dependable and has sufficient baseload energy for when wind and photo voltaic aren’t accessible. Unfortunately, laws that merely mandates extra manufacturing—particularly any laws proposed by these with a vested curiosity in selling oil and fuel pursuits—far oversimplifies the problems which are going through the state’s grid.

Texas’s grid failed throughout a winter storm in February 2021 that prompted widespread blackouts and hundreds of deaths. The explanation for the blackouts was multifold and included tools unready for freezing temperatures and the failure of pure fuel infrastructure. However, within the almost two years for the reason that storm, Governor Greg Abbott’s management has taken each alternative responsible renewables for the grid’s failure—together with serving to to unfold false rumors that frozen wind generators have been liable for the blackouts. (Some of those efforts have been inspired by fossil gas pursuits.)

Patrick, specifically, has a historical past of attempting to make use of the legislature to tie the palms of renewables and promote fossil fuels. After the storm, over the last legislative session (the Texas Legislature meets as soon as each different 12 months) he backed a invoice that will have imposed new charges on wind and photo voltaic power. While that invoice didn’t cross, Patrick additionally (efficiently) pitched a invoice that prohibits Texas from doing enterprise with corporations that “boycott” the oil and fuel business, which impressed a collection of comparable payments in different states.

At the identical time that Patrick is pitching this yes-more-gas method, the oldsters truly accountable for the grid are attempting to make some main selections to keep away from future disasters. The state’s Public Utility Commission advised a brand new proposal to make critical modifications to the grid that will mandate energy suppliers purchase credit as a approach to make sure energy throughout peak demand; this plan, as E&E News reported this week, “would favor thermal plants fueled by natural gas, coal and nuclear energy.” But there are numerous questions across the feasibility of this plan: A bipartisan set of lawmakers despatched a letter to the PUC expressing issues across the proposal.

And all of that is taking place as renewables are, for lack of a greater phrase, thriving in Texas. The International Energy Agency this month predicted that wind and photo voltaic will make up the biggest share of electrical energy within the state subsequent 12 months, pushing pure fuel use down. Legislation or insurance policies that actively punish renewables era might do critical injury to low-cost and clear sources of power.

The challenges going through Texas’s grid are advanced and don’t boil all the way down to some form of battle between fossil fuels and renewables; it’ll take cautious issues and main coverage selections to sort out its issues. Unfortunately, Republican lawmakers like Patrick have confirmed again and again that they’re decided to politicize these conversations—to color fossil fuels as good and renewables as unhealthy—and gloss over the small print in favor of serving to out their fossil gas funders.