Texas; National Leader in Renewable Energy?
Today’s the Grand Old Party (GOP) more or less stands for the Gas Oil Pollution party, with the United States’ primary petrochemical production states of Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma leading the pack in historic Big Oil investment, and wielding the political power for blocking an enabling national policy on the road to a national clean energy economy. These same petro states use the GOP political machine to push through policies (when their party is in the majority) to defund the EPA and cripple the agency’s environmental protection duties, while at the same time rolling-back and obstructing policies designed to address a climate crisis now sweeping the planet. They also seek to control the narrative, by defunding and denying scientific evidence linking the burning of fossil fuels to Global Heating now underway.
Monday, July 3, 2023 as it turns out was the hottest day ever recorded globally, according to the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction. The average global temperature reached 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.62 Fahrenheit), surpassing the August 2016 record of 16.92C (62.46F) as heatwaves sizzled around the world. “It’s a death sentence for people and ecosystems,” said Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. And it’s about to get worse.
The poster boy for this disconnection between blanket support for fossil fuels and blocking the advancement of renewable energy as national policy has been Texas. A classic example of of don’t do what I do, do what I say. Like other southern states, Texas is is battling brutal climate-fueled heat waves now regularly reaching triple-digit temperatures. This summer, like last summer, global heat waves triggered record levels of energy demand. In the case of Texas, and other oil and gas states suffering from the energy impacts of global heating, some might call this paradox “karma”. Hinduism identifies karma as the relationship between a person’s mental or physical action and the consequences following that action.
And this summer, like last summer, renewable energy are the heroes of this story — yet they remain curiously vilified by politicians in the Lone Star State in spite of Texas’ national leadership role in a statewide clean energy transformation. In recent years, renewable energy has been ramping up across Texas. The state has rapidly increased solar capacity, for instance, enabling as much as 16,800 megawatts of solar power to be produced on the grid as of the end of May. That’s roughly six times the capacity that existed in 2019 (about 2,600 megawatts), according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator.
The bottom line
This increase in solar energy, coupled with greater wind and storage development — is what has allowed Texans to beat the heat and keep their electricity bills down. The lesson here for Hawaii is a reality already playing out in Texas and elsewhere.
The Texas Lesson
Several thermal-energy (combustion and nuclear) plants in the state went offline in recent weeks, as coal, natural gas and nuclear facilities appeared to buckle under extreme temperatures and shrinking maintenance windows.
The addition of solar and wind generation more than made up the difference for these so-called “firm” energy power plants. Solar, wind and storage (aka renewables) for Texas now represent roughly 35 to 40 percent of power generation at peak, compared with about 30 percent last year.
As BeyondKona has reported repeatedly; technological advances in wind and solar energy systems offer not only the best value on energy delivered to ratepayers, but zero emissions (no GHG) and no pollution energy option. They are also more than competitive against fossil fuels, waste-to-energy, and biomass combustion plants, and all which contribute to greenhouse emissions and more Global Heating.
Improvements in storage technology, most notable batteries, have also helped address renewables’ most-cited weakness: their intermittency. In Texas for example, better batteries mean air conditioners can reliably keep blasting cool air even on hot cloudy, windless days, and the same lesson applies to Hawaii’s goal in meeting self-sufficiency clean energy needs.
Texas is not exactly known for its bleeding-heart-liberal populace, generates more electricity from wind and solar than any other state. Of the 710 megawatts of new battery storage that went online across the United States in the first three months of 2023, about 70 percent was in Texas alone, according to data from S&P Global.
Part of Texas rapid energy transformation is due to its progressive energy permitting environment, an area Hawaii continues to lag behind in its slow journey towards a clean energy economy.
In Related Developments
Oil lobbyists spend millions to stall California’s game-changing climate bill
California bills would force large companies that do business in the state to report all emissions and crack down on bogus carbon offset claims
Two transparency bills in the California legislature would require corporations to disclose more information about their emissions and their efforts to fight the climate crisis. The oil and gas industry is spending millions to kill them.
While some oil and gas companies in California have expressed their support for rolling back climate change, industry opposition fits into an agenda of delaying action, said Ryan Schleeter, communications director at the Climate Center.
“Delay is the new Denial,” said Schleeter. “Climate denial won’t fly in this state and companies are smart enough to figure that out, so they delay as long as possible and squeeze out as much profit as they can” said Ryan Schleeter, communications director at the Climate Center.
Yes, it’s beyond ironic, mostly cynical, that leadership in Red states seize the advantages of renewables and no doubt, a chunk of federal largesse, while at the same time makes political hay and kowtows to the worst of the worst fossil fuel moguls in that region.
Someone noted recently (I think it was Michael Moore) that most Americans don’t ‘get’ irony.. so little wonder at all that this disconnect persists.
I would guess that we may know we have an administration and congress serious about global heating when the last ff subsidies are finally retired!