As millions of Texans lost power during the winter storms, key players in the Legislature say one of the most immediate reforms they will pursue is recalibration of the state’s electricity grid to ensure more fossil fuels are in the mix and less renewable energy sources.
Although all energy sources were interrupted during the historic freeze, Republican lawmakers who control the Legislature say they have paid attention to renewable energy over the years, but it was still useless during the state crisis.
“It’s cool to like wind and sun these days, but the problem is that it keeps us cool in the winter,” said Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican who leads the GOP caucus in the Texas Senate.
Texas Electric Reliability Board officials said most of the generators that went offline this week were natural gas, coal or nuclear facilities. Yet Republicans singled out wind and solar power as targets over the objections of Democrats and advocates for renewable energy.
Texas taxpayers have funded more than $ 7 billion over the past eight years to build transmission lines to take wind power from West Texas to the big cities. This made Texas the largest wind producer in the country.
Net generation per thousand megawatts per hour throughout 2019.
1. Natural gas – 255 630
2. Coal – 91,817
3. Wind – 83 620
4. Core – 41 298
Son – 4 365
6. Other gases – 2 869
7. Conventional Hydroelectric – 1,475
Biomass – 14.61
(Source: US Energy Information Agency)
But Bettencourt and other Republicans say benefits like federal subsidies for wind and solar power should be equalized.
“We need a basic energy generation strategy in Texas that is reliable and not so heavily based on renewable energy,” he said.
Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, reaffirmed this week a bill he tabled last week that requires ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission to draft rules that will “eliminate the distortion of the market caused by certain federal tax credits” or compensate.
‘It’s not just the frozen wind turbines; it is the fact that they even exist that creates the problem, ”says Patterson, who works as an energy consultant. “Their existence, their strongly subsidized existence on our network, creates a shortage of energy supply because no one else can compete against them.”
The previous version of the bill was reduced to one that would require a study of market distortion. It’s dead in committee. But this year, Patterson says he expects there to be more interest, plus he’s now sitting on the calendar committee that chooses which bills will hit the house floor.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made a similar move earlier this week in an interview with FOX News when he made it clear that he believes clean energy sources are unreliable in the winter – although other states may make wind turbines work because the equipment wear is to handle cold. again, unlike in Texas.
“It just shows that fossil fuels are needed for the state of Texas as well as other states to make sure we can heat our homes in the winter and cool our homes in the summer,” Abbott said.
State Sen. Kelly Hancock, a North Texas Republican who leads the committee investigating the power outages, spent part of the week working to compensate for the work that thermal energy sources have done for the failure of renewables energy.
Hancock is chairing the Senate Business and Commerce Committee, which will hold its hearing on February 25.
The accusation of renewable energy sources is misleading and politically motivated, said Adrian Shelley, director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.
“There is no energy source that does not receive subsidies,” Shelley said. “There have been energy tax credits for fossil fuel sources for a hundred years, so to target the renewable tax credit is pretty insignificant.”
Required answers from ERCOT
Both the Texas Senate and the House scheduled for hearings next week on what caused so many Texans to be left without power in icy temperatures. Lawmakers are already saying they have many questions about ERCOT, the non-governmental group that runs the state’s power grid.
Abbott called for the leadership of ERCOT to resign.
State Senator Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, is among those asking why ERCOT has councilors who do not live in Texas. The chairman of ERCOT lives in Michigan and the vice-chairman in Germany.
“I am concerned that they have not been able to fully consider the impact of their decisions to reduce power for vulnerable Texans,” Alvarado said in a letter to the chairman of the Texas Public Utility Commission, which oversees ERCOT. .
Abbott slammed ERCOT officials for poor communication throughout the crisis. He said they were not transparent and did not provide information to the public or to elected officials, including himself.
State Joan Huffman, R-Fort Bend, says she will plan hearings to investigate the response of ERCOT and the Public Utilities Commission.
“I look forward to the opportunity to ask direct questions to the leaders of these entities in a public forum, because the people of Texas deserve answers and this committee will demand it,” Huffman said.
While there may be reforms to ERCOT, not many Republicans are talking about the prospect of ordering the state’s nearly 700 power plants to invest in weathering and what it would cost.
ERCOT officials said at a live press conference earlier this week that although it was recommended that power stations be defended after the 2011 winter storms shut down the power, it was voluntary and not mandatory.
Jon Rosenthal, a Houston Democrat and senior mechanical engineer in the oil and gas industry, said he was working on legislation that would build more reserve energy supply for Texas, such as by joining the state to the nationally interconnected system, or financial incentives for suppliers to increase backup power.
Rosenthal also wants to set reliability standards that require generators to weather their systems. He said he knows the addition of more regulations will be an uphill battle in the Republican Legislature, but believes there is a “lucky medium” that can be hit.
“Although the general argument ‘we do not want regulation so that we can supply electricity as cheaply as possible’ often produces cheap energy, these disasters are terribly costly, ” Rosenthal said. ‘I’ve heard insurers say it could be the most expensive natural disaster ever in Texas. So invest a little bit in your infrastructure to ensure that you do not have these disastrous consequences. ”
He added: ‘And it’s not just the cost of it. This is human suffering. ”
Bettencourt, who was without power himself for most of the week, said he was focused on making sure there was enough energy from thermal sources in the winter to prevent Texas from just going through.
While Texas was the country’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, it was also praised for dismantling coal-fired sources and turning more and more to cheaper renewable sources such as wind and solar. Most facilities in the state are natural gas, coal and nuclear power.
Dan Woodfin, a senior director of ERCOT, said earlier this week that natural gas is one of the hardest hit energy supplies.
“It seems that many of the generation that went offline today were mainly due to problems with the natural gas system,” he said.