Renewable Energy

The Lone Star State is one of the largest energy consumers in the country with high electricity rates and an air-conditioner load that sends electricity demand soaring during mid-day when the sun is at its highest.

We could use all that sunshine to generate power, not just generate demand: solar panels lining an area as small as thirty miles by thirty miles in West Texas could power the entire state. Yet today solar makes up less than 0.01% of the state's energy mix.

Due to its vast size and diverse climate, Texas ranks first in the nation for its renewable energy resources. In 1999, the Texas Legislature took a bold forward step by creating a Renewable Portfolio Standard, which mandated that certain utilities – those known as retail electric providers – invest in, contract with or purchase credits from energy sources that were powered by renewable resources such as the sun, the wind, geothermal gases and biomass. While representing a tiny fraction of overall generation capacity at the time, the combination of the mandate and the creation of market-driven tradable Renewable Energy Credits spurred a nascent market in wind development.

Texas has rapidly moved beyond those original goals.  Indeed, the legislature acted again in 2005, raising the goal to 5,880 MWs by 2015, and also set up a process to create new transmission lines so that the wind from West Texas could meet the energy demand in East Texas. Perhaps surprising even wind’s most ardent supporters, the pace of wind development has already outpaced the mandate and more than 5,000 MW of wind power has been added since 2001.  The installed wind capacity in ERCOT will surpass the 2015 renewable portfolio standard goal of 5,880 MWs in 2009. Texas will have met the Renewable Portfolio Standard almost entirely through wind generation.

While wind is currently the most inexpensive renewable to develop and its production has been progressing, study after study has determined that the potential in Texas for solar power is even greater than that of wind, especially if one assumes the technology will continue to improve and the price to decline. The sun shines continually in Texas, and is most powerful at precisely those times of day when electricity is most needed – the early and late afternoon. In addition, Texas has an extensive network of oil and gas wells that could take advantage of natural steam and heat under the earth to produce geothermal power.

Finally, Texas also has the potential to sustainably harvest agricultural and wood waste and others products for biomass energy production. While present law establishes a goal of 500 MWs of non-wind renewable energy by 2015, the goal is non-binding, and without further legislative action, Texas will not meet this goal. Instead, Texas should set a much more aggressive goal and require that by 2020, REPs provide roughly five percent of the state’s peak demand – 4,000 MWs – through other forms of renewable power, like solar, geothermal and biomass.

While California invested in a series of parabolic trough off-site concentrated solar plants in the 1980s with mixed results, in the last three years, the states of Nevada, California, Arizona and New Mexico have either announced, begun or completed giant solar power plants in the desert. All of these are being built to meet specific RPS mandates in those states, but as it turns out, the prices are increasingly competitive with other power sources, and are expected to come down over time. Texas has the potential for major off-site solar. The City of Austin has indicated it will make an announcement soon on a much more modest 30 MW photovoltaic solar plant, but it has also been exploring a much larger proposed plant in West Texas of 100 or 200 MWs that would depend upon other investors and better transmission infrastructure.

The creation of a specific renewable portfolio standard carve-out for non-wind renewables would help create a market for non-wind Renewable Energy Credits and give investors more regulatory certainty. The increased cost of traditional power plants coupled with the increased cost of natural gas has made solar look much more attractive than could have been imagined five years ago. The solar requirement would also be a boon for manufacturing jobs, as well as construction and installation jobs at a time when the economy is suffering from high food and gas prices. A recent study on the impacts on jobs of a 20 percent RPS nationwide found that more than 60,000 full-time equivalent jobs would be created in Texas, second only to California, including some 23,000 in the solar industry, and roughly 5,000 jobs from geothermal and biomass.

Geothermal energy also has a bright future in Texas, given the right incentives. The State of Texas holds massive potential for the development of clean, reliable, renewable geothermal power plants, as well as on-site building scale systems. A recent Texas Bureau of Geology study estimated that as much as 20,000 MWs of geothermal power lies under the States, most of it near the coast . It is estimated that if Texas were to develop 1,000 MWs of baseload power from approximately 30 small-scale utility geothermal plants (30-35 MWs each), it would produce 8,250 construction jobs and 300 permanent jobs, resulting in $1.9 billion in investment. These gains would come with virtually no emissions and a resource that is produced on-site.

Make Your Own Power: Distributed Generation

Instead of relying entirely on central station power plants, distributed renewable generation systems locate power sources closer to the consumer – in an office building, a neighborhood, a factory, or a home. Small renewable generation units located near the point of use can be a safe and reliable way to supply back-up power during blackouts, a cheaper alternative to escalating energy costs during peak demand, and a tool to relieve congested transmission lines and meet air quality requirements.

Texas has tremendous potential to develop these technologies, particularly solar power. With our sometimes-almost-unbearable amount of sunlight, chemical companies producing solar-grade silicon, and semiconductor companies producing photovoltaic equipment, Texas could become a world solar leader, creating thousands of manufacturing, engineering, and installation jobs and attracting billions in investment to the state.

The good news is that solar photovoltaic technologies have moved rapidly from serving off-grid niche markets like remote locations, emergency signs and calculators to becoming a mainstream electricity source. Yet, despite this progress, the cost of a home or commercial solar system in Texas has not yet fallen to the level where it makes long-term financial sense for a homeowner or business to install a system without government incentives.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, solar photovoltaics are expected to reach parity with traditional electricity sources within the next five years. With the right programs and policies today, Texas can have a great deal of control over how rapidly solar power becomes cost-competitive. And, by getting in on the ground floor of this new market, Texas can also benefit economically.

The experience over the last 10 years shows that if we invest now in creating the demand, the so-lar industry will meet it and, in doing so, will be able to manufacture and install solar PV systems at lower cost. And as they learn how to build solar PV systems more inexpensively, demand will increase, creating a “virtuous cycle” that will give solar power a tremendous boost in becoming a major source of Texas’s power. While government incentives can increase Texas’s installed solar capacity, an even better reason for them is that they can push down the cost of solar in the long run, to the point where incentives are no longer needed.

Texas should create a statewide direct rebate program to help make solar and other technologies cost-effective for Texans. Rebate programs run by utilities such as Oncor, Austin Energy, CPS Energy and Bryan Texas Utilities, and most impressively by the state of California, have demon-strated that direct rebates are an extremely efficient way to encourage solar installation.

A recent report by Vote Solar, Public Citizen and Environment Texas called Wildcatting the Sun found that a 2,000 MW 10-year solar incentive program would generate 21,500 jobs and only add an average of 0.98 cents to the average utility bill to make Texas an on-site solar leader.