New Texas Study Shows Anti-Energy Bills Tank Grid Reliability, Raise Costs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEApril 14, 2025Contact:Sandie HaverlahPresident, TCA Mobile (512) 423-0913Legislation limiting Texas renewable energy would prevent the state from meeting booming energy demand projections - weakening the ERCOT grid and driving up electricity bills, according to a new study released Monday.
The study casts a harsh spotlight on several bills that would restrict the growth of energy supply and, by extension, the state’s economy. The study focuses on Senate Bill 388 which would prevent energy developers from adding more renewables than “dispatchable” sources. The bill does not count battery storage as dispatchable, even though batteries can be energized and dispatched to the grid almost instantly when needed.
The study found that the legislation would create severe electricity supply deficits on the grid, leaving Texas with nearly 15 percent — and as much as about 90 percent — less electricity than projections say the state will need by 2030. That is largely due to “severe global supply chain backlogs for gas turbines and other practical construction constraints,” it said.
Other bills would have a similar impact to stifle economic growth. Senate Bill 819 today is another bill that could dramatically impact future investment in renewable energy. The bill would drive up consumer costs and sharply limit landowners’ ability to develop renewable energy projects on their property, singling them out with severe siting restrictions and an arbitrary bureaucratic approval process.
“Just last week, the Legislature learned that Texas needs dramatically more energy simply to power projected economic growth over the next five years. Renewable energy sources are delivering that energy at lower cost than any other resource,” said Sandie Haverlah, president of the Texas Consumer Association, which commissioned IdeaSmiths LLC to conduct the report. “Renewables are keeping Texans’ lights on, air conditioners running, and bills much lower than they would be otherwise.”
The study clearly lays out the stakes of these anti-energy bills: “The lack of new supply would also serve to make electricity more expensive through more and longer periods of scarcity pricing. This capacity shortfall would represent a significant threat to grid reliability as basic grid resource adequacy requirements would not be satisfied. It would also serve as a barrier to Texas’s economic growth as it would diminish the amount of investment in new supply while also preventing investment in new loads as they might not be able to connect to the grid in a timely fashion.
“Those loads might move to other states where electricity supply is available,” the study authors added, “taking their economic development and jobs with them.”
Haverlah said that if the state really wants to improve reliability and reduce costs, the legislature should empower and require thorough review of electric utility rate costs and performance. Those costs have significantly increased customer bills and could lead to up to a 40 percent increase in costs by 2030.
Anti-energy bills like SB 819 and SB 388, as well as SB 715/HB 3356, which was heard in the House Committee on State Affairs today, undermine TCA’s goals of increased reliability and affordable electric bills.
“SB 388 supposedly represents a policy effort to encourage grid reliability. … Given the unprecedented load growth expected over the next decade and the constrained ability to build new gas-fired power plants at the needed pace, this legislation might instead have the impact of stifling the overall growth of the grid – exacerbating the reliability concerns it purportedly seeks to address,” IdeaSmiths reported. “By tying renewable expansion to the deployment of natural gas capacity, SB 388 risks creating a bottleneck where neither clean energy nor firm capacity can scale up fast enough to meet the state’s needs.”
To see the full study, click here.