As wind energy continues to be a growing part of the Texas energy industry, some criticize the government's involvement and allege that the growth is artificially inflated by government intervention.

The amount of power derived from wind generation in Texas grew 11% between 2018 and 2019, reaching 84.4 thousand gigawatt hours (GWh), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Growth in production capacity from wind power in the state grew 17% in the same time frame, and in 2019 18% of all electricity generation came from wind power, compared to 6% in 2010. 

Amid the growth, Robert Bradley, Jr., CEO and Founder of the Institute for Energy Research and longtime Enron employee, continues to criticize the industry. 

“The Texas wind power boom is a creation of government intervention, not the natural economics of wind in light of consumer demand,” Bradley said in an interview with the Lone Star Standard.

Yet in 2010, Bradley was already raising questions about the origins of the wind energy boom in Texas.

In an article posted to Master Resource, Bradley outlined the links between Enron and the push for wind-based electricity generation in Texas.

Bradley tracks the start of Texas’ romance with wind energy to 1997, when Enron purchased the struggling Zond Corporation and renamed it the Enron Wind Company. He claims that it was Enron’s lobbying power that led to the strict renewable mandates Texas enacted in 1999.

“The Texas mandate created an unholy business-government alliance of sufficient size for the state to increase its renewable mandate in 2005,” Bradley stated in the post. “Texas is the leading wind power state in the country – but hardly by consumer choice.”

In a recent email to the Lone Star Standard, Bradley reiterated his stance from 2010.

As he did in 2010, Bradley continues to see the ongoing growth of wind energy in Texas as the legacy of the infamous former Enron CEO, Kenneth Lay.

“The father of the Texas wind industry is Ken Lay of Enron,” Bradley told the Lone Star Standard.

Because the industry is not economically viable on its own, wind power as it stands continues to grow only because of taxpayer money being fed into it, Bradley said.

“Industrial wind is wholly a government-created industry, unlike solar that has a market niche off the grid,” Bradley told the Lone Star Standard.