Wright Is Wrong

On key facts related to Texas, the Secretary of Energy is either purposefully misleading or misinformed

In New York last week, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said wholesale electricity costs in Texas are up 100% in the last five years.

The context makes it worse. Here’s what Wright said: “Texas has the fastest rising wholesale electricity prices of any region in the country, 100 percent rise in wholesale prices from the start of the Biden administration to today.”

That is objectively false.

The fastest rising wholesale costs of any region?! Has he heard of PJM?

Here are some facts, which one would hope the Secretary of Energy would have access to:

• According to ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor, adjusted for inflation, wholesale prices in 2024 were lower than 2020, which was the COVID year. To repeat, not only are prices not up 100% from 4-5 years ago, they are actually lower.

• There were three high-priced years: 2021 (due to Winter Storm Uri), 2022 (due to higher gas prices following the Russian invasion of Ukraine), and 2023 (due to the second-hottest summer in recorded Texas history and a dearth of solar and batteries to provide electricity during peak and net peak periods, respectively).

• Costs in 2024 – Texas’ sixth-hottest summer – were 50% lower than 2023. It was, according to ERCOT and the IMM, one of the lowest-cost years in the history of the Texas market.

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the Independent Market Monitor’s data:

And 2025 is shaping up to be another year of relatively low wholesale electricity costs in Texas. As the Energy Information Agency has shown, wholesale prices in ERCOT have been far lower than the national average each of the last two summers:

And the cost of ancillary services this summer were stunningly low, mostly due to batteries:

Wright can hate renewables; it doesn’t make sense but that’s his right. But he can’t – or at the very least shouldn’t – misinform or mislead the public.

Outdated Thinking

Here’s more from Wright last week:

“So the electricity grid doesn’t just collect electrons and store them somewhere. It has to match supply and demand at every second.”

That is an actual quote from the Secretary of Energy of the United States of America – who apparently isn’t aware that batteries exist.

U. S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright during his NYT interview

Battery storage was absolutely essential this summer in helping Texas avoid price spikes and energy emergencies, as the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, Houston Chronicle, and others have reported in recent weeks.

Over just a couple of years, battery storage resources on the ERCOT grid have scaled at a staggering pace: Texas now has enough battery capacity to equal 15% of peak demand; it’ll be nearly 20% by the end of the year.

And that’s just utility-scale – there’s another gigawatt of distributed storage in homes and garages across the state, plus 20 gigawatts more rolling around in electric vehicles; with the right price signals, EV batteries also could be deployed to the grid in times of scarcity, as stationary storage is doing today.

The phenomenal growth of battery storage resources are transforming grids around the world. In the ERCOT market, operators are storing up low-cost power – including but not limited to renewables – every day. That power is then available when demand is high and supply is scarce.

ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas told me batteries are one of the most “innovative things that has happened to the electric grid since the invention of the electric grid.”

Batteries increase grid reliability and resiliency while lowering costs.

The Secretary of Energy, of all people, should know that we can, in fact, store power now.

Costs, Costs, Costs

Across the country, energy inflation is weighing on consumers and slowing the economy. Wright himself has said it’s a liability for the Administration.

But he’s taking a bad situation and making it worse.

Study after study has demonstrated the role that Texas’ nation-leading renewables are playing in containing energy costs. Studies released this spring – amid a fusillade of baffling anti-energy attacks in the Texas Legislature – showed that shutting down renewables in Texas would dramatically increase the risk of blackouts and increase wholesale market costs in ERCOT by $115 billion over 15 years.

Another study showed that the Administration’s anti-energy actions could make Texas businesses’ power costs go up 54%.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is among the many voices urging the Trump Administration to end its attacks on renewables: “ America needs every possible electron it can get, from any source, to ensure affordable and reliable energy,” the Chamber declared last month.

That’s because employers have to live in the real world, where AI and data centers are helping to drive demand ever higher and consumers are dealing with rising costs and energy inflation.

Secretary Wright should join us in that real world where wholesale power prices in Texas are the lowest they’ve been in a long time. Texas has a diverse resource mix that’s working.

Secretary Wright shouldn’t mess with Texas, especially with made up stats.

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