Weekend Edition: Reading & Podcast Picks

Me on NPR's Weekend Edition on how the US House budget bill would hurt the US economy, consumers, and manufacturing, and Texas in particular; the quiet demise of anti-energy bills in Texas; and more

Today is the second-to-last day of the legislative session; tomorrow is technical corrections only so this is functionally the last day. I’ll have a legislative session wrap-up in the newsletter and for the podcast this week. Let me know in the comments if there’s anything in particular, beyond the obvious, that you’d like for me to cover.

Reading and Podcast Picks is a collection of what we’ve been reading and listening to over the last week or so about energy topics.

This post is for paid subscribers. Please become one today. In addition to these R&P Picks, paid subscribers receive access to the archives of hundreds of articles, all of the Grid Roundups, and select episodes of the Energy Capital Podcast, including this one with Jane Stricker of the Greater Houston Partnership’s Houston Energy Transition Initiative.

Federal tax credits for solar energy could be eliminated, what are the impacts? NPR Weekend Edition

I joined Ayesha Rascoe today on NPR’s Weekend Eddition to talk about the US House bill now under consideration in the Senate. If it passes in its current form, Texas would be among the biggest losers. We’ll still see solar and storage built in Texas; it’s nearly 80% of what’s getting installed and alternative energy like gas is hard to build because of gas turbine availability and cost.

But we would have less built compared to a scenario where the Senate gradually phased out the tax incentives over time.

The result would be much slower economic growth, higher electric bills, and a huge advantage to China in the race for new power sources, with massive implications for a stated objective of the Trump Administration: AI supremacy.

Already, “China dominates the AI energy race.” The gap would widen if the House bill passes as is. I’ll have a lot more on this topic in the coming weeks.

Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ puts booming Texas solar industry at risk. San Antonio Express News.

Case in point: passing this bill would cost thousands of jobs and billions in investment right here in Texas according to reporting from Sara diNatale.