Trust Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s enablers in the Texas Senate to drive up customers’ electricity bills, wreck the climate and possibly enrich one of the world’s wealthiest men while wasting billions on 1950s-style solutions for 21If the lite guv’s favored bills become law, they would also destroy the competitive electricity market and return Texas to the era of big government.
Only the biggest companies would participate. Prerequisites include already operating 15,000 megawatts of generation and possessing $1 billion in assets for every 1,000 megawatts they provide.Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which just so happened to pitch a very similar $8.3 billion planSchwertner’s bill would force Texas consumers to pick up a $10 billion price tag to have the brand-new, highly-efficient power plants sit idle, waiting for another, perfectly avoidable crisis.
The Republicans’ goal is to keep coal plants open and burn more natural gas. SB7 requires the Public Utility Commission to help the Legislature “ensure that market signals are adequate to preserve existing dispatchable generation and incentivize the construction of new dispatchable generation.”Senate Bill 2015