Texas the Biggest Loser in US House Budget Bill: Grid Roundup #60

Texans likely to have a 17% increase in electric bills, over $100 billion in lost investment, and reduced grid reliability if the House bill is adopted as is by the Senate

In this edition:

• US House passes budget reconciliation bill (aka the Big Bad Bill) which would repeal most energy tax credits; if it becomes law, Texas could lose out on over $100 billion in investment and consumers’ bills will go up;

• New study for the Texas Consumer Association shows SB 715 would leave a capacity shortfall of at least 15 gigawatts and as much as 50 gigawatts depending on load growth;

• Senate Bill 6, the large load bill, will be on the House floor today;

• House Bill 3069 to deal with transmission congestion and long term planning gets a hearing in Senate Business & Commerce;

• Senate puts provision to allow Parks & Wildlife to shut down energy projects back into House 3556.

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US House passes budget bill

On a 215-214 vote, the US House passed a big bill that will result in bigger electric bills for Americans. As it passed the House, renewables and storage, including geothermal, will only get tax credits if they begin construction within 60 days of enactment and are connected to the grid by 2028.

According to the Rhodium Group, this could result in 600 GW less power on the grid nationally in 2035, in their middle-of-the-road projection. Total capacity is about 1,300 megawatts currently.

Any hope to power the AI revolution in the US or for this country to actually be energy dominant will die if the bill passes the Senate in that form. We will see a massive pullback in energy investment and production. Gas turbines are unavailable until the 2030s and nuclear can’t be developed until then either.

It was a good day for China. And a bad one for Texas.

According to both ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas and PUC Chair Thomas Gleeson, solar and storage have kept us out of grid emergencies repeatedly. If this bill passes in this form, we’ll be back to dozens of conservation alerts and higher energy bills every summer (17% higher in 2030 according to Dr. Jesse Jenkins of Princeton).

Over $100 billion in energy investments in Texas are now at risk. Even if the Senate makes this bill less terrible for energy production, the House-passed bill will have a chilling effect on investment, including over $12 billion in House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington’s district. Job layoffs and higher electric bills are coming, and the hit to manufacturers will be particularly brutal.

For outstanding investment, most of which would disappear if this bill became law, five of the top seven, and 10 of the top 20, congressional districts are in Texas.

America is shooting itself in the foot, and Texas, as the biggest energy producing state, is going to feel the most pain.

New research shows massive energy shortages if efforts to restrict renewables move forward