Texas Senate passes bill to upend energy market, spur gas over renewables

17 comments

1. This has to be an Onion article.

2. If they don meet the 50% dispatch-able energy they have to buy credit for what? For fossil fuel production?

   If gas is more expensive than other sources they are basically manipulating the market in a way that will make energy more expensive!

3. After years of whining about big government, they’re now using big government to…intentionally give people dirtier and more expensive energy? This is what corrupt political extremism looks like.

4. Gee, it’s Texas and they want to promote gas….shocking I say…just shocking…

5. Marching bravely into a third world nation.

6. Renewable power to gas to the rescue.
   Can even be stored as a methane hydrate.

7. Non renewables are called that because there is limited quantity of it. These people are so dumb.

8. > Part of the problem for gas plant owners is that renewables are producing more megawatt-hours cheaply, driving down the returns that gas plants make during hours that solar and wind produce a lot of energy. Texas gas plants looked to the peak summer hours to boost their profits for the year, but now solar and batteries are cutting into those hours, too.

   Good news that they feel so threatened. Hopefully the bill doesn’t get passed.

9. Playing devils advocate here.

   1.) Ercot already does this in a way today. As of a couple years ago they created a rate system that allocated an extra 500 million a year to dispatchable power. So this is not something new.

   2.) The title is wrong. The law does not benefit only gas. Texas is at the forefront of SMRs and with all the fracking wells and drilling know-how geothermal could become huge. Just like CREZ made Texas an early adopter and leader in wind, this could make Texas a leader in geothermal. Texas is also set to become the US leader in green hydrogen once hydrogen city is complete in another couple years which would qualify

   3.) We do have a very real risk of dunkelflaute today. You see it every year during winter preparation when they estimate the risk of outages. We need some kind of dispatchable energy, green or not. Battery economics in Texas currently only allow for 4-6 hours. Something needs to cover longer periods.

   4.) The law does not state any costs or how it’s implemented. For all we know this might be a $1 fee for every billion dollars. Or might be a replacement for the existing $500 million. Or the fund might invest exclusively in emerging technologies.

   5.) Nobody is building fossil fuels. We had the same outrage a couple years ago with TEF when Texas legislature allocated billions of free money for gas power exclusively. And in the end nobody wanted the money because nobody wants to build new fossil plants

   6.) If you read the bill, it is 50% of capacity, not 50% of generation. This means that if you plop down an gas peaker plant (which are mass produced unlike what the article states), and never turn it on, it still counts. Reality is that electric prices are very frequently below 1 cent at which point gas cannot cover their fuel cost, so they will never be turned on. In other words, all the energy you use will still be beautiful clean green energy. There will just be a bunch of gas plants sitting around doing nothing. On a side note, all these idle gas plants can help with #2. If electrofuels become a thing, these plants can burn it without any real changes.

10. If it provides you guys with any comfort, the same bill passed the Senate last session and died in the House (though it has been slightly modified from what passed the Senate in 2023).

11. I will never get these “legacy” sectors. They have all the money and influence to innovate and hedge against the inevitable end of their resources, but somehow everyone one them refuse to. How have we not learn from “coal country” turning into the biggest area affected by the opioid crisis.

    ETA: can’t leave out US steels too.

12. That’s a shame, they’ve been doing well with renewables

13. We should be leading the world in renewables and energy storage, instead we’re too busy fighting about it to just do it.

14. So short sided.

15. 30% of the electricity in Texas comes from wind and solar. It’s amazing that they still claim it doesn’t work, while continuing to reap the benefits of green energy.

16. Have they talked to the oil and gas companies? I think not. Not much left in those basins they have developed, why do you think the smart ones are into renewables. It’s all energy.

17. I assume they want power for a cloudy winter day with no wind?

    There’s a reason there is a national grid that the rest of the country uses… it’s usually sunny somewhere.

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