Cheaper Power Is Too Woke for Texas Republicans
The state is debating bills that would boost gas and restrain renewables, risking higher electricity costs.
Darkening skies.
Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg
Texas’ free-market approach to electricity helped it surpass California in utility-scale solar power and catch-up quickly on batteries. Yay? Not if you’re a certain kind of politician in Austin. Legislators are debating bills that would restrain renewables — and, in the process, increase power prices and potentially stymie the state’s ambitions in artificial intelligence.
A bill just passed out of committee in the Texas state senate would establish a “dispatchable generation credits trading program.” Dispatchable generation can be switched on and off at will, as opposed to renewable sources such as wind or solar, which depend on the weather and time of day. SB 388 aims, via state subsidies, to ensure that 55% of all new generation installed from next January is dispatchable. In practice, that means natural gas-fired plants because another type of dispatchable supply, battery storage, is specifically excluded by the bill.