On a 24 to 7 vote, Senate Bill 541 passed its third reading in the Texas Senate. The bill, primarily authored by Kirk Watson, would mandate that 1500 megawatts of clean renewable energy by the year 2020. In April, the Senate passed another renewable energy bill, SB 545 by Fraser. The group Environment Texas had the following to say about the two bills after today's news:
Last month, the Senate passed SB 545 (Fraser) to create a statewide rebate program for solar power. While that bill is best set up to fund solar on rooftops, Sen. Watson's bill is best set up to fund utility-scale solar, biomass and geothermal projects. By providing energy at peak demand during the day (solar) or round the clock (biomass and geothermal), these projects would complement wind energy, which generally maximizes capacity at night. Texas is already investing $5 billion on new transmission lines for wind projects, so these projects could be co-located underneath wind farms, doubling the return on our investment.
According to ERCOT and the PUC, by displacing use of high-cost natural gas, renewable energy can significantly lower electric costs. With federal action expected on global warming and renewable energy , technologies like solar will become even more cost competitive. An analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund found that SB 541 will provide a net savings of over $3 billion to Texas consumers by 2020 and reduce CO2 emissions by 20 million tons a year by 2020. According to a new poll commissioned by the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, 61% of Texans favor requiring a certain amount of electricity be generated from solar power.
Both SB 541 and SB 545 could propel Texas to be a world leader in the development of solar, geothermal and biomass technologies, benefitting businesses across the state. In Pasadena, Texas, MEMC is the world's largest supplier of solar-grade silicon. In Austin, Applied Materials (the world's largest manufacturer of the equipment that makes solar panels) has a facility that could be retooled for solar production. In Brownwood, Barr Fabrications produced steel braces for the nation's largest solar thermal power plant in Nevada.
Both these bills are clear policy wins for Democrats, or at least they will be if the House passes them and the governor signs them. And although one of the two bills was authored by a Republican, we can call these clear Democratic wins because each bill received a handful of "Nay" votes; all from Republicans.
Hopefully the House will pick up these two bills and pass each of them. Speaker Straus has shown sympathy to the causes of renewable energy, but the Republicans can only show their dedication to the cause if they pass the bills entirely.
Democrats will win on this, whether in the legislature now or in the elections in 2010. The issue of renewable energy is an economic issue as well as an environmental one -- providing for more renewable energy will create jobs that will last generations. And it's pretty obvious that job creation resonates with voters. |
