To boost fossil fuels, Abbott is rejecting Texas’ crown as renewable energy leader
Gov. Greg Abbott has made clear that he’s more interested in boosting fossil fuel burners’ profits than improving the electric grid or fighting climate change, and he’s rejecting new ways of generating clean, reliable and affordable energy.
The two-term Republican had two chances to help Texas lead the global energy transition. First, he issued orders to his new appointees on the Public Utility Commission, and he set the agenda for a special session of the Texas Legislature.
Abbott is not letting lawmakers have a say in overhauling the wobbly Texas grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, known as ERCOT. Instead, he wants to dictate solutions that benefit coal and natural gas companies over clean energy.
Abbott ordered the
PUC, which oversees ERCOT, to redesign the state’s wholesale electricity market to reward generators that can provide backup power. This is a break from the current, 20-yearold system that pays generators only for the energy they put on the grid, not their capacity to generate.
Critics of the system have correctly called on
ERCOT to set up some version of a capacity market that pays generators to have readily available power in an emergency. But Abbott twists this good idea by calling for more natural gas, coal and nuclear power, not a more strategic approach.
Coal plants should have no part of Texas’ energy mix. They produce vast amounts of greenhouse gases, and they are more expensive to operate than other sources, including wind and solar.
Nuclear power does not release any emissions, but new plants are astronomically expensive and better nuclear technologies are not ready yet. The two existing nuclear plants in Texas already operate at almost full capacity; therefore, they do not require any additional incentives.
Natural gas plants, meanwhile, are great in emergencies, and ERCOT should encourage companies to have enough of them for the few hours every year when demand spikes. But Abbott should be ordering the PUC to incentivize renewable energy storage technologies, such as batteries and compressed air, instead.
Abbott’s more disturbing order is to pile additional fees and costs onto wind and solar generators. In a complete disregard for how the wholesale electricity market operates, he perversely wants to punish them because they cannot turn on the sun and wind at will.
The key to reducing wind and solar intermittency is to expand the geography where wind and solar energy are generated. If the PUC provided the right incentives, for example, wind companies could install turbines in the Gulf of Mexico, where the wind almost always blows.
Instead, Abbott intends on knee-capping renewables to give old, failing fossil fuel plants a few more years of profitability at the expense of Texas customers.
Lastly, Abbott ordered the
PUC “to accelerate the development of transmission” lines to new natural gas and coal power plants, explicitly excluding wind and solar generation. He is using his power to appoint the PUC to pick and choose winners and losers.
Such huge policy decisions would typically fall within the purview of the Texas Legislature, which created ERCOT and the wholesale electricity market. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Abbott to put ERCOT market reforms on the special session’s agenda, but Abbott decided to rule by decree rather than allow the GOP-controlled Legislature to provide input.
Abbott’s policies are profoundly regressive compared with the innovation taking place on other major U.S. grids. Not to mention, Abbott could solve almost all of Texas’ electric reliability problems by simply connecting to the national grid rather than maintaining ERCOT as a separate island.
Another state that struggles with extreme heat, Nevada, is a national leader in high-voltage transmission lines that are adding more renewable energy, including geothermal, to the grid. Nevada’s leaders plan to rely on carbon-free energy for 50 percent of the state’s power by 2030.
“I know one thing that’s on a lot of people’s minds is what happened in Texas, and could what happened in Texas be repeated here in Nevada?” Doug Cannon, CEO of the utility NV Energy, told Nevada regulators in March. “We are in a very different position here in Nevada than what they were experiencing in Texas.”
Dozens of other states are also innovating. New York is adding offshore wind; the mid-Atlantic PJM grid is building solar facilities with batteries built in. Virginia is boosting clean energy standards.
Abbott is intent on abdicating Texas’ crown as the world leader in renewable energy. But don’t believe for a minute this is about reliability, he’s ignoring the best solutions. No, he’s running for re-election, and his letter is about raising campaign funds and rallying right-wingers to win.