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Conservation is underrated.
Conservation is underrated.
Transferring costs from industrial to residential customers, too.
Could Texas lawmakers end the state’s renewable boom?
Critics argue the bills they’ve proposed would do little to keep the lights on — while chilling solar and wind projects despite historic federal support for those technologies.
state House where lawmakers seem less bullish on upturning the energy market.
Others would target the laissez-faire regulatory environment that has allowed renewable energy to flourish, including by requiring renewable energy projects to pay for backup power or by adding new grid connection fees.
Clean energy developers say the proposals are already influencing investment decisions in the nation’s second-largest state by population.
“We’ve got billions of investment dollars that we’re hoping to bring to Texas, and that’s at risk if the government is going to be punitive.”
The bills exemplify recent efforts in Republican-controlled states to
boost fossil fuels at the expense of renewables amid rapid changes to the energy resource mix.
Renewable energy was not the root cause of the 2021 blackouts. A report from federal agencies found that all forms of power failed, but the failure of natural gas plants to function in extreme cold was a driving factor behind the power losses.
S.B. 6, which would use surplus taxpayer money to pay electric utilities to build up to 10,000 megawatts of natural gas power plants.
For perspective, energy consumption in Texas last winter hit a new peak of 74,427 MW.
https://www.eenews.net/articles/could-texas-lawmakers-end-the-states-renewable-boom/
Taxpayers pay for the Capital investment, then pay heavily to buy the electricity from those investments.
Corrupt, hole Texas
Texas bills would set state against federal oil and gas regulation, renewables
A Texas bill would bar state officials from helping enforce any federal oil and gas law that contradicts the state’s own laws.
the bipartisan bill would potentially hamstring attempts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate pollution by the oil and gas industry, putting the state — by far the nation’s largest source of planet-warming emissions from fossil fuels — on a collision course with both the Biden administration and future attempts to slow climate change.
proposed legislation aimed at growing the Texas oil and gas industry while weakening the federal government’s ability to regulate it —
despite attempts to do so currently remaining hypothetical.
build a fleet of new gas plants while raising taxes on Texas’ wind and solar industry, which is the largest in the nation.
Yet another Senate bill would
require all wind and solar projects in Texas to go through stringent environmental and permitting regulations — including notifying all property owners within 25 miles —
that the oil and gas industry remains exempt from.
(That bill would require all existing renewable generation to go through the same process retroactively.)
https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/3924460-texas-bills-would-set-state-against-federal-oil-and-gas-regulation-renewables/
TX Repugs are two-bit cheap s as bribed and owned by the BigCarbon
Subsidizing -- and building a moat around -- oil and gas.
Big government conservatives coddling donors, deciding winners and losers. The ultimate losers here are residential ratepayers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/o...le-energy.html
The GOP gave up governing for culture war bull
renewable energy is one of the things Texas has been really great at.
hole TX's bag Repugs are excluding wind/solar from the successor of 313
and
using "the administrative state" to obstruct, punish wind and solar, like new difficult permitting with retroactive, ex post facto penalties.
Doug Lewin isn't predicting blackouts, but wear and tear on energy plants during heat waves/cold snaps is more or less intuitive. One hopes the grid won't be reliability challenged again anytime soon.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06...winter-storms/The Supreme Court of Texas narrowly decided Friday that sovereign immunity, which largely shields government agencies from civil lawsuits, also protects the operator of the Texas electric grid.
The 5-4 opinion will likely free the nonprofit corporation from lawsuits filed by thousands of Texans for deaths, injuries and damages following the deadly 2021 winter storm, unless lawyers find another way forward.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the power supply for most of Texas, qualifies for immunity because it “provides an essential governmental service,” Chief Justice Nathan Hecht wrote in the majority opinion. State law intended for ERCOT to have the power of an “arm of the State government,” Hecht wrote. If anyone is going to hold ERCOT accountable for its actions, Hecht wrote, it should be state regulators or the Legislature, not the courts.
LLC laws are up their with LEOBOR laws in needing a repeal.
At this point I would take any actions on the recommendations of the Sunset Commission though.
Closing the courtroom doors to the public to seek redress, how convenient.
Not sure what your getting at here. Sunset has been ignored straight up and is only an advisory board.
One main thrust of their report was that ERCOT had no clue what the state of the grid was making their reports not based on reality. They recommended several solutions to this issue which were ignored.
The state is being intentionally obtuse. Their strategy seems centered around limiting liability as opposed to governing.
I broadly agree with all that. Governing badly on purpose seems to be the strategy, it has almost a gnostic feel, as if they were trying to hasten the last judgment by their own sins.
the courtroom doors have been slammed shut.
The Supreme Court of Texas narrowly decided Friday that sovereign immunity, which largely shields government agencies from civil lawsuits, also protects the operator of the Texas electric grid.
The 5-4 opinion will likely free the nonprofit corporation from lawsuits filed by thousands of Texans for deaths, injuries and damages following the deadly 2021 winter storm, unless lawyers find another way forward.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the power supply for most of Texas, qualifies for immunity because it “provides an essential governmental service,” Chief Justice Nathan Hecht wrote in the majority opinion. State law intended for ERCOT to have the power of an “arm of the State government,” Hecht wrote. If anyone is going to hold ERCOT accountable for its actions, Hecht wrote, it should be state regulators or the Legislature, not the courts.
first of a four-parter.
paywalled, sadly.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/texas-2021-blackouts-pipeline-lawsuits-18266638.php
Oklahoma and Kansas have sued pipeline companies for manipulating prices just before Uri struck in 2021.
“Aggravating an already stressed market, on the morning of February 16, 2021, Macquarie entered into an economically irrational natural gas trade in which it purchased natural gas for next-day delivery within Southern Star at the single highest price ever paid for Southern Star natural gas,” the suit alleges. “The trade was not a fiasco for Macquarie, but instead a resounding financial success – because the actual effect … was to manipulate the Platts Southern Star Gas Daily price for February 17, 2021, upwards.”
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/bus...e-18266653.phpMeanwhile, in Oklahoma, one of the state’s top oil and gas regulators asked the attorney general to investigate pipeline operators and gas traders for market manipulation that cost the state $3 billion.Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Bob Anthony was exasperated because his colleagues would not look into evidence of illegal behavior.
“All the same questions raised … about utility management decision-making during the February 2021 Winter Storm are relevant again here, as are the questions about price-gouging, fraud and market manipulation,” Anthony wrote in an official commission filing.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond agreed and began recruiting outside law firms to bring suit.
In 2021, San Antonio’s city-owned utility CPS Energy sued 16 natural gas companies over $850 million in surprise fuel bills from the 2021 storm. In some cases,CPS has reached settlements but the details remain secret.
“I wouldn’t have gotten that good of a deal if everybody else in the market knew the company was giving us that deal,” Shanna Ramirez, CPS Energy’s general counsel, told my Hearst Newspapers’ colleague Diego Mendoza-Moyers. “I know that I’m asking people to trust me. I am doing this because it is in the best interest of our customers.”
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