Bill Peacock | Submitted
Texas’ troubled electric grid needs repair and reform. That’s something virtually everyone can agree, with several incidents in recent years showing a lack of reliable power for Texans, their businesses and organizations.
So why isn’t that being properly addressed? Longtime energy analyst and writer Bill Peacock of Austin has definite opinions on that.
“State and federal politicians’ inability to keep their hands off the electric grid has caused great harm,” Peacock told Collin Times. “This can be clearly seen in the billions of dollars of renewable energy subsidies each year they give to wind and solar developers. These subsidies distort energy prices and lead to renewables flooding the market at the expense of reliable generation from natural gas, coal and nuclear generation.”
He said Texas residents are increasingly displaying their concern over this, and the failure of their elected officials to deal with it.
“Affordable and reliable energy is one of the drivers of economic growth. It is no surprise that consumers would be concerned about the recent problems with Texas' electric grid and about significant increases on their electricity bills,” Peacock said.
According to the University of Texas’ Texas Politics Project, nearly 90% of Texas voters consider the operation and condition of the state's power and electrical grid to be an important issue in the 2022 election. This percentage was consistent no matter their political affiliation, religion, race, education, or living location.
The TPP report also noted that voters are neck and neck on deciding which political candidate they think will be able to do a better job on the state's electric grid. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican seeking a second term, is only leading his opponent, former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, by 1%.
Texas voters consider the viability of the electrical grid to be one of the most important issues in the election, so much so that it has made the top four. It comes in at second place, just behind immigration and is just above gun violence and the economy.
Nearly 70% of Texas voters are reporting their current home energy bills are higher now than at the same time a year ago. Once again, nearly 90% of these people reporting in are saying these higher prices are impacting their lives in some way, with over 50% saying it is making a high degree of impact on their day-to-day lives.
To help improve the power grid, Texas voters are strongly in favor of making a variety of extensive improvements. These improvements include upgrading transmission lines and other electrical equipment, expanding overall energy efficiency, and increasing the use of emerging energy technology.
On July 6, 2021, Gov. Abbott released a plan containing four points on how to help the grid.
The objective of these directives is to ensure that all Texans have access to reliable, safe, and affordable power, and that this task is achieved in the quickest possible way,” his letter to the Public Utility Commission of Texas states. “Through clear communication, transparency, and implementation of these critical changes, the PUC and ERCOT can regain the public’s trust, restore ERCOT’s status as a leader in innovation and reliability, and ensure Texans have the reliable electric power they expect and deserve.”
One point was to “allocate reliability costs to generation resources that cannot guarantee their own availability, such as wind or solar power.”
Peacock said that is a start, but hardly enough.
“Forcing renewable energy generators to pay for the harm they are causing to the grid is far better than making consumers pay for it,” he said. “However, the rest of Abbott’s plan, particularly his desire to give subsidies to all electric generators, would undermine most of the gains made through the effort to allocate reliability costs.”
So why isn’t real progress being made? Peacock said politicians are to blame.
“Standing in the way of dealing with the harm caused by renewable energy is Texas politicians,” he said. “Very few of them are willing, in public, to deal with the criticism they would receive from taking on the renewable energy lobby and its friends in the mainstream media. Many of them still tout an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy which ignores the harm to reliability and affordability that renewables cause.”
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