Environment Texas Blog

Solar Day

On Tuesday, the Texas Senate Business and Commerce committee held the much-anticipated “Solar Day”, hearing over a dozen solar, renewable energy and efficiency bills. At the same time, the House State Affairs committee considered four bills to improve interconnection and net metering standards for distributed renewable generation owners. Dozens of people, including representatives of Texas Business for Clean Air, the Solar Alliance, Heliovolt, First Solar, the Austin Chamber of Commerce, and Standard Renewable Energy spoke in support of the bills. Unfortunately, representatives of the Texas Association of Manufacturers and others testified in opposition.

In my testimony, I spoke about the proven success of the energy efficiency programs and the economic development potential for solar. I also presented a petition signed by 1385 Texans over the course of just 3 days (thanks to Vote Solar for help in generating signatures) supporting a 4000 mw program for emerging renewable energy at the utility scale and a 3000 mw program for distributed generation such as rooftop solar. On solar, we are pushing SB 427 (Shapiro), SB 541 (Watson) and SB 1419 (Lucio). On efficiency, we are pushing SB 601 (Van de Putte) and SB 545 (Fraser).

The same day, the Dallas Morning News ran an op-ed by John Hofmeister (founder and CEO of Citizens for Affordable Energy and former president of Shell Oil) and me. The op-ed called on the legislature to require utilities to develop 4000 megawatts of solar and to increase their energy efficiency programs.

The committees left all the bills pending, with negotiations between stakeholders likely to begin soon.

Federal Budget Clears House Committee

Yesterday, the U.S. House Budget committee approved a budget resolution that paves the way for passing comprehensive global warming and energy legislation. That morning, Environment Texas and allies held a press conference outside the Waco office of Congressman Chet Edwards to urge him to support the budget. Three media covered the event, including the Waco Tribune Herald and the Baylor Lariat. We are very grateful to Congressman Edwards for his vote in support of the budget resolution.

We strongly support passing this budget as a step towards solving global warming and building the resources to invest in the transition to a clean energy economy.  In fact, the science makes clear that the President and this nation must quickly do even more to stave off the worst impacts of global warming.  We look forward to working with the President, his scientists and the rest of his administration as well as leaders in Congress to pass the budget and then take quick and bold action later this year to cap global warming pollution at levels scientists say are necessary.

The San Antonio Current has a great article this week examining the importance of Congressman Gonzalez (San Antonio) in the upcoming debate on global warming and clean energy.

Efficiency Money On its Way to Texas

Finally, Vice President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced plans to invest $208 million in energy efficiency and conservation projects for state, county and city efforts in Texas. This builds on an investment of $545,757,732 in Texas weatherization and energy funding announced by the Administration on March 12^th. Great news!