Houston renewable energy

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According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Houston is already the top municipal user of renewable energy in the U.S and is on the EPA’s Top 30 Local Government list of green power users. As Turner has said “The City of Houston has a proud history of commitment to renewable energy.”

Back in 2008 when Hurricane Ike hit, Houston lost billions of dollars in damage and had a decline in funding for equipment and system improvements, according to a report from NRG. However, Houston developed such an effective cost-saving solution that the City was still able to meet electricity goals even after Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017.

As Houston faces the coronavirus crisis, which has caused a decline in clean energy jobs, the renewable energy business is expected to continue growing. A report from the New York Times says Caton Fenz, a chief executive of ConnectGen, a wind, solar, and electricity-storage developer based in Houston, said “We just can’t get specific things done because of the pandemic, but I don’t think that affects the broader trajectory.”

Houston’s recent agreement with NRG Energy is the start of implementing the new Houston Climate Action Plan that aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. The City of Houston’s Office of Sustainability says “the time for bold action is now,” as Houston still has many other climate action plans in the future.

Texas renewable energy

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Texas also leads the nation in energy production according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. As it turns out, Texas has an abundance of cheap renewable power.

New data from the EIA shows that Texas has the second-largest population in the U.S. and uses more energy than every state in the nation, but provides over one-fifth of US domestically produced energy. Because Texas has so much cheap renewable power, around 80% of the corporate renewable deals signed in 2019 were in Texas for solar energy.

Texas is also leading the nation in wind energy, and saved more than $5.7 billion between 2010 and 2017 using wind energy. Texas’s success in wind energy also led to the Renewable Portfolio Standard, which required that 5,880 megawatts came from renewable sources by 2015. However, Texas met the 2015 goal as fast as 2008 and met the goal of using 10,000 megawatts by 2025 in 2010.

It’s fascinating that Texas has met and set so many renewable energy goals even with the state’s culture and political views.

Texas: The conservative Republican state leading in renewable energy

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Texas has long been known as a Republican and conservative state. The Republican Party of Texas even describes the state as being “the strongest Republican state in the nation,” so the very fact that Texas leads as a renewable energy user but also has a culture that is usually against green deals is surprising.

Back in 2012, when Obama wanted to create green jobs, Mitt Romney attacked the idea as he said Obama had an “unhealthy obsession with green jobs.” However, after so many green jobs have existed, Republicans have noticed their benefits. Washington Examiner reported in 2018 that Republicans are starting to show more support towards wind and solar jobs.

Dan Reicher, the Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration says “Republicans are seeing a huge number of big paying jobs being created in their districts and in their states.” In 2019, a report from the Yale Program for Climate Change Communication surveyed nearly 1,000 registered voters in the U.S. and found that 71 percent of Republicans supported policies that required utilities to produce 100 percent of electricity from renewable or clean sources by 2050.

However, there are still some conservative Republicans who disagree with clean energy. Despite Texas making massive progress as a renewable energy user, the Texas Public Policy Foundation recently ran an ad that said, “Some congressional Democrats want to use the coronavirus aid bill to enact their climate change agenda.” They had tried to block aid to solar and wind industries, which are being impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Recent evidence shows that some Republicans have started to change their views of renewable energy. Texas is an example of a state strongly against regulations, with a surprisingly long history of clean energy deals.

Texas’s hatred for regulations

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Alongside Texas being a Republican and conservative state, it has also been known to hate regulations.

In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Texas abortion restrictions. It was a major victory for women, but a setback for an anti-regulation group of Republicans who had always attempted to control how individuals in Texas behaved.  According to a Texas Tribune report, this band of Republicans constantly relied on their hatred toward regulations to keep their politics in place.  The report also says the band of Republicans doesn’t actually hate regulations, “they just hate the other side’s regulations.”

In 2017, the Republican’s policy of having a lack of regulations disproved itself as Texas’s job growth declined massively, after leading the US in job growth for years. Not long before this, Rick Perry and conservatives from Austin said the reason Texas created more than 1.4 million jobs from 2007 to 2015 was because of low taxes and few regulations.

Just a few years later in 2020, it’s hard to believe a state that has been so against regulations is now set on a 7-year goal of using 100% renewable energy by 2025. As a state that is seen for its strict political views from anti-business to anti-regulation, it is interesting to see how Texas surpasses all other states, even Democratic ones, in progressing towards a cleaner future.