Dem aims to boost funds for natural gas
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar said Wednesday he’s looking to steer more federal funding to natural gas-fueled electricity generation in the $3.5 trillion spending bill that’s moving through Congress.
As emissions billowed from CPS Energy’s Calaveras gas-fired plant in the background, the Laredo Democrat said at a news conference that Democratic lawmakers’ efforts to expand renewable energy sources in the U.S. shouldn’t hobble the oil and gas industry. Energy companies provide an estimated 347,000 jobs in Texas.
“We definitely need to look at clean energy, but you can’t do it to disadvantage or attack oil and gas while it still creates thousands of jobs in our area,” Cuellar said. He represents the 28th Congressional District, which reaches from Laredo to San Antonio and covers a large swath of the Eagle Ford Shale oil and gas field.
“When we do the big reconciliation bill and we look at clean energy, I’m hoping that natural gas can be part of the clean energy,” he said.
Cuellar was referring to the budget reconciliation bill that’s being crafted by congressional Democrats. Much of the spending in the bill would go to progressive priorities such as expanding Medi
care, extending child care tax credits and clean energy initiatives.
Cuellar didn’t say how much funding he’d seek in the budget bill to bolster gasfired power generation.
His comments came a week after the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a nearly 4,000-page report that found extreme weather has become more common and reiterated that humans are causing climate change.
“The new warning from the UN, from the IPCC, is actually Code Red,” said Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a leading advocate in Congress for climate initiatives. “This budget resolution is a oncein-a-generation opportunity to save our people and our planet.”
Cuellar said prioritizing natural gas over coal — as a fuel for power generation — could help continue reducing emissions while reliably producing electricity and preserving jobs. Natural gas emits between 50 to 60 percent the amount of carbon dioxide that burning coal does, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Supporting natural gas also would have political benefits for Democrats, said Cuellar, who received $219,000 in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry ahead of the 2020 election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
“We saw what happened in South Texas with this last election,” he said. “The Trump campaign did a great job at saying that Democrats were against oil and gas.”
In 2016, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton garnered 72 percent of the vote in four South Texas border counties within Cuellar’s district: Hidalgo, Starr, Webb and Zapata. Last year, Democrat Joe Biden lost ground in the region, winning 55 percent of the vote across the four counties. Then-President Donald Trump beat Biden in Zapata County.
City-owned CPS Energy, one of the largest municipally owned utilities in the country, is developing its “FlexPower Bundle” initiative, the aim of which is to replace the utility’s aging natural gas plants with new generation.
A new gas-fired plant is one possibility. CPS has floated the idea of converting the Spruce 2 coal-fired unit to run on natural gas.
The utility is also soliciting proposals to build 900 megawatts of solar power generation and 50 megawatts of battery storage, which could help shore up electricity supply in San Antonio when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.
CPS expects to award contracts for the FlexPower Bundle plan before the end of this year.
Texas’ power generators cut their annual carbon emissions by a combined 10 percent between 2015 and 2019, even as consumption of electricity statewide increased by nearly 10 percent in the same period, according to the EIA.
Part of the industry’s reduction stemmed from renewable energy.
So far this year, wind turbines and solar panels have generated 28 percent of the state’s electricity, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. That’s up from 15 percent in 2016.
The shutdown of coal plants and the state’s heavier reliance on natural gas for electricity also have helped reduce emissions, according to a report published Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
But Texas is “approaching the limits of the current generating mix,” Garrett Golding, a business economist at the Dallas Fed, said in the report. Aging gas and coal power plants have gone offline for maintenance more than grid operators had expected, and renewable power isn’t available on demand.
Boosting the amount of battery storage in Texas could help provide emissions-free power when demand is high. The cost of industrial-scale batteries is falling quickly.
And tweaking the state’s grid to pay power plants for electricity they produce, whether it’s used or not, could make the state’s power system more reliable, according to the report.
“Continuing (reducing emissions) and providing reliable electricity are not incompatible goals with prudent planning and incentives,” Golding said.