![]() ![]() The Legislature also passed a bill that offers $5 to $10 billion in taxpayer money for low-interest loans for new gas plants. As passed, the bill was capped at a still-painful $1 billion. Another, Senate Bill 7, would have saddled taxpayers with a $6 billion check for a new energy finance tool, called the Performance Credit Mechanism, which rewards gas and coal plants for simply existing, without mandating they generate more power. One bill would have offered zero-interest loans in taxpayer money to help maintain natural gas power plants. That meant the bulk of the legislative session was spent with a broad coalition of players-environmentalists, manufacturers, energy generators, and even oil and gas advocates-playing defense: stopping the legislature’s attempts to kill renewable energy and minimizing handouts to the oil and gas industry at consumers’ expense. Another bill would have raised the costs for renewable energy producers to sell their electricity in the state’s marketplace. One bill would have required renewable energy developers to obtain a state permit, an environmental impact statement from the Parks and Wildlife Department, and hold multiple community hearings-regulatory hurdles that don’t apply to natural gas and coal plants. But lawmakers proposed about a dozen bills to hamstring renewable energy production in Texas, now the nation’s largest producer of wind and solar energy. ![]() Last year renewable energy saved Texans $11 billion. Lawmakers proposed about a dozen bills to hamstring renewable energy production in Texas, now the nation’s largest producer of wind and solar energy. Instead, the Republican majority spent the last five months attempting to undermine the renewable energy industry and enrich oil and gas companies at the expense of taxpayers and consumers. “Data shows for the first time that the peak demand for electricity this summer will exceed the amount we can generate from on-demand, dispatchable power, so we will be relying on renewables to keep the lights on.”ĭespite what’s been at stake since 246 people died and 4.5 million homes and businesses lost power during Winter Storm Uri two years ago, Texas lawmakers blew another chance to fix the grid. “The Texas grid faces a new reality,” Lake said. On May 3-about a month before his resignation-Public Utility Commissioner Peter Lake warned that Texas’ demand for electricity this summer will exceed the amount that can be generated from natural gas plants. The failure that may come home to roost the fastest has to do with the state’s sagging electric grid. Here are a handful of highlights and a lot of lows. ![]() And now there’s a special session for added thrills. It wasn’t all bad, but parts were very, very bad, especially for LGBTQIA+ Texans. They didn’t even accomplish their own top priority, which was property tax cuts. Republicans, riding a wave of authoritarian successes, wasted most of the session on an assortment of cruel social policy proposals aimed at making points with their far-right supporters and, as feared, failed to address truly important things like the electric grid, gun control, and school funding. Instead, the Lege lived down to its reputation, and, for the most part, spent this session in, as Observer Senior Writer Justin Miller imagined it then, a race to the bottom that took us to depths “previously unknown and unimaginable.” Think of it as the Awful 88th. ![]() As the 88th session of the Texas Legislature opened in January, Texas Observer writers scanning the political horizon noted a faint glimmer of hope that, perhaps this time, lawmakers would locate their statesman-like qualities and, at long last, spend the spring giving relief to taxpayers, the environment, electricity-users, public schools, teachers, and other long-neglected government workers. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |