After the Texas Senate passed legislation focused on fixing reliability concerns in the Texas power grid, Bill Peacock, policy director of the Energy Alliance, issued criticism of the Senate's approach.
Peacock said the legislation, SB 6 and SB 7, don't do enough to address unreliability in the grid, which he said is out of control due to subsidies and government regulation. SB 6, in particular, only exacerbates the existing problems, according to Peacock.
The Texas Senate passed SB 7 on April 5 by a unanimous vote of 31-0. The Senate also passed SB 6 by a vote of 22-9, with eight Democrats and one Republican opposing. Both bills now move on to the House of Representatives.
Senate Bill 6 would authorize funding to build additional dispatchable energy generators to serve as backups in case of emergencies. The measure would provide $100 million per gigawatt, and limit the additional backup capacity to 10 gigawatts, meaning SB 6 could pay out $10 billion for new backup generation. The legislation would also provide low-interest loans to existing dispatchable generation.
Senate Bill 7 seeks help to "target investment" at dispatchable sources of generation, as well as allocating the cost of unreliability and intermittency to generators that contribute to that unreliability and intermittency.
Peacock told the Lone Star Standard that the Senate should be focusing on bills like Sen. Bob Hall’s SB 1752, which eliminates many of the subsidies for renewable and traditional generators, instead of SB 6, which Peacock says only brings new subsidies to the table.
"Passing SB 6, which will lead to more intervention in the market, is not the answer to the problem of poor reliability of the Texas grid; it is the problem."
The Austin Journal reported that Sen. Mayes Middleton, who voted in favor of both bills, said that while he supports SB 6 and 7, "there is still work to do to increase the grid reliability and lower costs for taxpayers."
Columnist Chris Tomlinson offered his criticism of SB 6 in the Houston Chronicle, saying the plan would "force Texans to pay $10 billion for a brand-new backup power system that we will never need if the grid is managed correctly." Tomlinson pointed out that the bill found plenty of disapproval in committee hearings, with 22 of 24 witness groups opposing it, including groups that are typically on opposite sides of issues such as the Association of Electric Companies of Texas and the Sierra Club.
Research published by the Energy Alliance found that since 2007, wind and solar generators in Texas collected $66 billion in investments. Additionally, generators were on the receiving end of over $21 billion in local, state and federal subsidies. In that same timeframe, renewables grew their share of the Texas energy market from 3% to 31%. The research projected that figure would grow to 37% by the end of 2023. The Energy Alliance's research concluded by listing a number of recommendations to improve the reliability and price of electricity in Texas, one of which was to combat renewable energy subsidies and tax breaks head-on to fix "price distortions" that they caused.
