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As millions of Texans have lost power during winter storms, key players in the legislature say one of the most immediate reforms they will advocate is to recalibrate the state’s electricity grid to ensure that more fossil fuels are in this mix and less renewables.
While all energy sources were disrupted during the historic freeze, Republican lawmakers who control the legislature say renewables have received all the attention over the years, but proved to be useless during the crisis. ‘State.
“It’s cool to be in the wind and the sun these days, but the problem is it leaves us freezing in the winter,” said State Senator Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston who heads the caucus. from the GOP to the Texas Senate.
Officials from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said most of the plants that were taken out of service this week were natural gas, coal or nuclear facilities. But despite everything, Republicans have chosen wind and solar as targets over objections from Democrats and renewable energy advocates.
Texas utility taxpayers have funded more than $ 7 billion over the past eight years to build transmission lines to bring wind power from West Texas to major cities. This made Texas the largest wind power producer in the country.
Net production per thousand megawatt hours in 2019.
1. Natural gas – 255,630
2. Coal – 91 817
3. Wind – 83,620
4. Nuclear – 41,298
5. Solar – 4,365
6. Other gases – 2,869
7. Conventional hydroelectric – 1,475
8. Biomass – 14.61
(Source: US Energy Information Agency)
But Bettencourt and other Republicans say benefits like federal subsidies for wind and solar power must be matched.
“We need a baseline power generation strategy in Texas that is reliable and not so heavily based on renewables,” he said.
Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, this week picked up a bill he introduced in the last session that would require ERCOT and the Utilities Commission to write rules that “would eliminate or compensate for market distortion caused by some. federal tax credits ”.
“It’s not just frozen wind turbines; it’s the fact that they even exist that creates the problem, ”said Patterson, who works as an energy consultant. “Their existence, their heavily subsidized existence on our grid creates an energy shortage because no one else can compete with them.”
The previous version of the bill has been reduced to a version that would have required a market distortion study. He died in committee. But this year Patterson says he expects there to be increased interest, and he now sits on the calendars committee that chooses which bills will come to the House.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hinted at a similar approach in an interview with FOX News earlier this week when he made it clear he believes clean energy sources are unreliable in winter – well that other states can keep wind turbines in operation because the equipment is cold resistant. weather, unlike Texas.
“It just shows that fossil fuels are needed for the state of Texas as well as other states to ensure that we will be able to heat our homes in the winter and cool our homes in the summer,” Abbott said. .
State Senator Kelly Hancock, a North Texas Republican who heads the committee to investigate the power outages, spent part of the week celebrating the work thermal power sources have done to offset the failures of renewable energies.
Hancock is chairman of the Senate Business and Commerce Committee, which will hold its hearing on February 25.
Blaming renewables is misguided and politically motivated, said Adrian Shelley, Texas office manager of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.
“There is no source of energy that does not receive subsidies,” said Shelley. “There have been energy tax credits for fossil fuels for a hundred years, so targeting the renewable energy tax credit… that’s pretty dishonest.
Demanding answers from ERCOT
The Texas Senate and House are both scheduled for hearings starting next week on what drove so many Texans to find themselves in freezing temperatures without power. Already, lawmakers say they have plenty of questions about ERCOT, the nongovernmental group that manages the state’s electricity grid.
Abbott has called for the resignation of ERCOT management.
State Senator Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, is among those wondering why ERCOT has board members who don’t live in Texas. The president of ERCOT lives in Michigan and the vice president in Germany.
“I’m concerned they haven’t fully considered the impact of their decisions to cut power to vulnerable Texans,” Alvarado said in a letter to the chairman of the Texas Utilities Commission, which oversees the ERCOT.
Abbott criticized ERCOT officials for poor communication throughout the crisis. He said they were not transparent and did not provide information to the public or elected officials, including himself.
State Senator Joan Huffman, R-Fort Bend, said she would schedule hearings to deepen the response from ERCOT and the Public Services Commission.
“I look forward to the opportunity to pose direct questions to the leaders of these entities in a public forum, because the people of Texas deserve answers and this committee will demand them,” Huffman said.
But while there can be reforms at ERCOT, few Republicans are talking about the prospect of ordering the state’s nearly 700 power plants to invest in bloat and what that would cost.
ERCOT officials said earlier this week at a statewide press conference that while it was recommended that power plants survive inclement weather after the winter storms of 2011 cut power, these were voluntary and not compulsory requests.
Jon Rosenthal, a Houston Democrat and senior mechanical engineer in the oil and gas industry, said he was working on legislation that would create a larger power reserve for Texas, for example by connecting the state to the interconnected system at national level or by offering financial services. incentives for suppliers to increase standby power.
Rosenthal would also like to see reliability standards introduced that require generators to tamper with their systems. He said he knew adding more regulations would be an uphill battle in the Republican-majority legislature, but he believes there is a “middle ground” that can be found.
“Although the common argument ‘we don’t want regulation so that we can provide electricity at as low a price as possible’ provides cheap energy most of the time, these disasters are terribly expensive,” he said. said Rosenthal. “I’ve heard insurers say this could be the costliest natural disaster on record in Texas. So you invest a little in your infrastructure to make sure you don’t have these dire consequences. “
He added, “And it’s not just the cost. It is human suffering.
Bettencourt, who himself has been without power for much of the week, said he works to ensure that enough energy comes from thermal sources in the winter to avoid repeating what Texas just did. live.
While Texas was the nation’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, it was also lauded for the decommissioning of coal-fired power sources and its increasing use of cheaper renewable sources like power. wind and solar. Most of the state’s facilities are natural gas, coal and nuclear.
Dan Woodfin, senior director of ERCOT, said earlier this week that one of the hardest hit energy supplies was natural gas.
“It appears that a large portion of the generation that has gone offline today is primarily due to issues with the natural gas system,” he said.
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