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Texas lawmakers have been advancing sweeping legislation to address some of the major issues stemming from February’s deadly winter storm and catastrophic power outages. But some of the legislative moves are targeting renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, which experts and some lawmakers say seems more like a way to protect oil and gas interests than fix problems with the state’s beleaguered power grid.
Tucked into Senate Bill 3, which seeks to overhaul the state’s electricity market, is a key provision that would shift the financial burden of ancillary services, which help ensure power is generated continuously to Texas’ main electricity grid, to renewable energy providers. Texas electric providers currently cover the ancillary services costs.
State Sen. Nathan Johnson, a Dallas Democrat, said he’d feel better about the bill “if there is logic to doing this.”
“But I’m convinced that we’re making a big mistake by attacking a problem that isn’t the problem just because we feel like it might be the problem, when the data says the opposite,” Johnson said on the Senate floor in late March.
Wind power is a renewable energy source that was expected to be a fraction of winter power generation. All sources — from natural gas, to nuclear, to coal, to solar — struggled to generate power during the February storm.
Yet some prominent Texas Republicans during and after the storm blamed the widespread outages on frozen wind turbines. Targeting renewable energy is not new for the Texas Legislature, but lawmakers have revamped their attacks on the sector after February’s power outages left millions without electricity for days.
Johnson ended up voting in favor of SB 3, which has now been referred to the House as it takes up a series of related, standalone bills. Johnson has said he ultimately voted in favor of SB 3 because there are more positives in the legislation than negatives.
