Texas Renewable Cronyism Continues (Sheridan summary)

“An unlikely coalition of renewables groups, manufacturers and oil & gas companies opposed the bills. ‘It might as well have been the ~Lobby Employment Act of 2025~ based on the number of lobbyists hired to fight it,’ wrote state representative Jared Patterson.” (Sheridan, below)

Doug Sheridan is a noted analyst of the climate/energy realism school. With more than 40,000 social media followers, he corrects the bias of the mainstream media in real time. Little surprise that his influence dwarfs that of many prominent ‘magical thinking’ energy pundits, part of a very promising global rethink.

Sheridan’s latest analysis concerns the failure of the Texas legislature to cool the jets of uneconomic, destructive wind, solar, and batteries in the Lone Star State. But how did Texas, of all states, end up where it is today?

Background

The strange case of Texas and renewable energies is a case study of concentrated benefits, diffused costs. Robert Kelly at Enron, with the full support of CEO Ken Lay, put Enron into the solar (1995) and wind (1997) businesses, described in Enron Ascending: The Forgotten Years (Chapter 13: “Alternative Energies”).

A trio of economic PhDs at Enron–Lay, Kelly, and Bruce Stram–were true activists for energy transformation. Enron would restart the solar industry, rescue the US wind industry, and help legitimize the climate issue (pp. 529–30).

Enron capitalized on the Energy Policy Act of 1992, which granted liberal subsidies for both wind and solar. National taxpayers (diffused costs) would subsidize Enron (concentrated benefits). Lay got George W. Bush involved as Texas governor, and Rick Perry would continue the subsidies flowing after Enron’s life.

The Latest from Texas

Here is Sheridan’s latest.

The FT writes, a campaign by “rightwing” lawmakers in Texas to limit renewable power projects has failed in the state legislature, underscoring the state’s “commitment to all sources of energy” as it strains to meet exploding demand.

Take 1: Apparently, at European news outlets like the FT, having concerns about subsidized, part-time energy sources overrunning your power grid makes you a “rightwing” politician.

Take 2: Do tell FT, how is a continuation of policies that virtually guarantee that the only new generation built on the state’s grid, at least for the next 5+ years, is wind or solar a “commitment to all sources of energy”?

An unlikely coalition of renewables groups, manufacturers and oil & gas companies opposed the bills. “It might as well have been the ‘Lobby Employment Act of 2025’ based on the number of lobbyists hired to fight it,” wrote state representative Jared Patterson.

The package of three proposed laws would have required solar and wind projects to purchase gas-fired backup generation, limited where renewable projects could be built and required that half of all new power plant capacity must come from gas-fired generation.

Take 3: Texas politicians, including the Governor and Lt. Governor, have allowed massive amounts of subsidized, first-in-line, part-time renewables to poison the economic well on Ercot to such a degree that there’s now no quick fix. So, cravenly, they’ve decided to allow the well to continue to be further poisoned.

Meanwhile, US senators are debating whether to axe Biden-era tax breaks for green energy, and Trump’s policies have halted efforts to expand renewable power sources. Some GOP senators are pushing back against proposals passed by the House to remove incentives in order to pay for the president’s tax cuts.

Take 4: We’ll wait to post in detail about the future of the Texas grid once we see what happens with renewables tax credits at the federal level.

This is a critical time for Texas. ERCOT estimates peak demand will nearly double by 2030 because of a rise in population, manufacturers and data centers. In Feb, it predicted the state’s power demand could surpass its supply next summer.

Take 5: If more part-time renewables is the only generation Texas has to offer developers of 24/7 data centers and millions of potential new residents, our guess is Ercot’s projections for massive demand growth on the Texas grid will prove wildly off base. Rates will simply be too high for demand to rise to such levels.

“Texas has an energy dominance,” said Doug Lewin, president of Austin, Texas-based Stoic Energy Consulting. “Why would you give it away for ideological reasons?”

Take 6: Wait, what? Texas can’t get anyone to develop on its grid without massive federal or state subsidies. That’s not dominance—that’s dependence… on gov’t. No wonder socialist Europe admires the Texas grid so much.

Kudos to Doug Sheridan for effectively countering the Deep Ecologists and others from the Progressive Left. Good analysis is driving out bad because of his labors, as well as other climate/energy realists who have gained the upper hand on major social media platforms.

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Source: https://www.masterresource.org/texas/texas-renewable-cronyism-continues/