Since 1999 no state has added more renewable energy to its grid than Texas, aided by more than $24 billion of federal, state and local subsidies, according to the Energy Alliance. Texas politicians have continually upped the bid for renewables.
Author Robert Bryce said Texas is making its decisions based more with political motives than sound economic judgments.
“Supporting renewable energy is politically popular,” Bryce told Austin Journal. “But it comes with real downsides. As I said in a Dallas Morning News piece last August, the ERCOT [Electric Reliability Council of Texas] grid nearly failed because of an epic government failure.”
Perhaps the most expensive year for Texans was 2005, at when the Texas Legislature increased its mandate for renewable generation and mandated the construction of transmission lines to West Texas to benefit wind and solar farms. Those decisions alone will cost Texans more than $13 billion by 2029.
The costs of renewables continue to climb. In 2021 total subsidies to wind and solar generation topped $2.4 billion, the Energy Alliance reports. State and local subsidies, which are completely under the control of Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the members of the Texas Legislature, came in at almost $1 billion.
A recent Clean Power report found that Texas led the nation in adding renewable energy generation in 2021. Its 7,352 megawatts (MW) that came online last year far outpaced California’s second place addition of 2,697 MW.
“Clean and renewable energy are a valuable part of America’s future and are closely tied with Texas’ prosperity and success,” Abbott said in his Clean Energy Week Proclamation in September 2020.
Bryce said the Lone Star State is placing itself and its people, businesses and organizations at risk by adhering to this policy.
“Texas has put itself in a situation similar to that of California,” he said. “Our grid has been compromised by overinvestment in renewables and underinvestment in thermal generation. That’s bad for reliability, affordability and resilience.”
Bryce said there is a complex answer to that question of where subsidies for renewable energies come from.
“But the big subsidies, in the form of tax credits, are provided by the federal government to solar and wind developers,” he said. “Those tax credits, as well as the state subsidies, have totaled about $22 billion, according to work done by Bill Peacock.”
Peacock is vice president of research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and policy director of the Energy Alliance.
The Public Utility Commission (PUC) has been accepting comments on a reliability service for ERCOT. Bryce said it’s unclear if that is likely to fix Texas’ energy problems.
“Again, a simple question with a complex answer,” Bryce said. “The simplest solution is one that Texas policymakers can’t control. We need to eliminate the federal tax credits that are distorting the ERCOT market.”
Bryce has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, with more than 1,000 articles published in dozens of outlets including Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal.
He has written six books and was the executive producer of a feature-length documentary: “Juice: How Electricity Explains the World.”
Bryce also hosts the Power Hungry Podcast.
