2/18/05

Texas takes steps to increase renewable energy use

Mella McEwen
Midland Reporter Telegram

Texas, the nation's leading producer of crude oil and natural gas, is taking steps to increase its use of renewable energy.

A bill filed with the Texas Legislature this week would increase to 5,000 megawatts the amount of power derived from renewable energy by 2015, raising that amount to 10,000 megawatts or 10 percent of the state's energy demand, by 2025. The bill was filed by State Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horsehoe Bay.

Increasing the use of renewables to provide the state's power is a key recommendation of the Texas Energy Planning Council, which was chaired by Railroad Commission Chairman Victor Carrillo.

"Texas has tremendous renewable energy potential. We must ensure that wind power and other renewable energy sources are a part of our future energy mix. While we continue to support and need traditional energy sources, like oil and gas, producing at full capacity, we also need to begin to better harness the abundant renewable sources like wind and solar energy," Carrillo said at an Austin press conference with Fraser to announce the bill.

Fraser's bill would encourage at least 500 megawatts of that 5,000 megawatts of renewable energy be generated by non-wind renewables such as solar or biomass, including landfill gas. It also would direct the Public Utility Commission to take steps to increase the number of transmission lines across the state by identifying and designating areas favorable to renewable development and taking steps to bring that power to the marketplace.

The bill is good, but it doesn't go far enough, said Travis Brown, energy projects director in Public Citizen's Texas office. Joined by Kate Abend, clean energy field coordinator with the Union of Concerned Scientists and Randy Sowell, land manager with Cielo Wind Power in McCamey, they came to the heart of Texas' oil and gas production to promote an increase in renewable energy use.

Increasing the state's renewable energy portfolio to 20 percent would not only put Texas in the top tier of states using renewable energy-generated power but it would create jobs, additional taxes to support schools and result in lower energy bills, Brown said.

"Texas was the first to adopt the first successful renewable energy standard. Texas set the standard but now 18 other states have adopted standards that are more aggressive," said Brown, adding that other states like New Mexico, Kansas, Minnesota and Illinois are moving aggressively to develop wind power projects.

Doubling the standard to 20 percent would create significant economic development, especially in rural Texas, said Abend.

She cited a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists that said a 20 percent renewable standard would create about 39,000 new jobs, bring $9.4 billion in new capital investment, $1.1 billion in school tax revenues and energy bill savings of $5.6 billion.

As land manager in Cielo's McCamey projects, what he called one of the largest concentrations of wind turbines in the world, Sowell said has seen the benefits of renewable energy on both sides of the issue: The clean sources of power at a good price and the opportunities for economic development in a rural area "that's rare."

"What we've done in McCamey is the top of the iceberg, and it can be repeated all across the west," Sowell said.

The problem, said William Wallace of Midland, president of Wallace Petroleum Investments and a member of the Energy Planning Council, is that "20 percent of Texas energy needs is an enormous amount of energy."

Furthermore, he said, in proposing the increase from 3 percent as mandated by the Texas Legislature in 1999 when it agreed to deregulate the state's electric utilities, the state is having to subsidize renewable energy to make it competitive with fossil fuels -- oil, natural gas and coal.

The bottleneck, Wallace said, has been a lack of sufficient transmission lines to move power generated by McCamey's wind farms or other renewable sources to markets.

"What we're essentially doing is putting the cart before the horse and hoping to force the Legislature and the PUC to take action," he said.

As an oil and gas producer, he pointed out that in agreeing with the increase in renewable energy standards, he was essentially raising his costs of doing business because about a third of an oil and gas producers' expenses is the power to produce oil and gas.

But, he said, the council also wanted to make the statement that the state needs renewable energy and council members want renewable energy to thrive.