Nineteen business groups and non-profit organizations published a letter to members of the Texas Legislature calling on the House and Senate to start moving Blackout response bills that focus on helping people weatherize their homes. Specifically, the letter points to members of the Senate Business & Commerce Committee and House State Affairs Committee to schedule hearings on bills that would increase the state’s goal for energy efficiency.
“The winter storm crisis was a problem of both supply and demand. Both sides of the equation must be addressed to ensure we avoid more power outages in the future,” the letter stated.
There are two identical bills that have been referred to their respective Senate and House committees that have yet to be scheduled for a hearing: SB 243 by Sen. Sarah Eckhardt (Austin) and HB 4556 by Rep. Rafael Anchia (Dallas). Thel bills would increase the state’s energy efficiency goal to equal approximately 1% of annual energy sales of the utilities such as Oncor, Centerpoint, and AEP.
According to a Public Utility Commission report, Texas’ energy efficiency programs have cumulatively saved 2.1 Gigawatts (GW) of power over the 20 years they have existed. The signatories noted that if energy efficiency programs had been up to “average” over the last two decades, Texas would have had an additional 6 GW of savings and reduced the impact of the February outages by 30%. “Further, hundreds of thousands of homes would have had more insulation, which would have kept those homes warmer during the outages,” the letter stated. With countless stories of Texans reporting indoor air temperatures below 30 degrees during the storm, more energy efficient homes combined with reduced energy demand across the grid could have saved lives.
According to the groups, “Much of this peak demand was driven by inefficient buildings that waste massive amounts of electricity when energy is most valuable: at times of near or actual crisis. In addition to other issues that the winter storm exposed, legislators should focus on weatherizing homes and buildings to save energy and increase resilience, not just power plants and gas supply.”
The signatories include:
-
Sierra Club
-
US Green Building Council
-
North American Insulation Manufacturing Association
-
Jolt Action
-
Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance
-
MOVE Texas
-
EIS Lighting
-
Environmental Integrity Project
-
Public Citizen
-
Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience (CEER)
-
Clean Water Action
-
Environment Texas
-
S.A.F.E. Diversity Communities
-
Indivisible TX Lege
-
Texas Campaign for the Environment
-
Environmental Defense Fund
-
Texas Impact
-
American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy
-
SEED Coalition
The Texas House has until May 10 to move bills out of committee. However, the chances of bills making it all the way through the process and onto the Governor’s desk are smaller with every day that passes without hearings on bills and may soon be down to zero in a matter of weeks.
[Editor's Note: if you haven't signed our petition to support these bills, visit sc.org/WeatherizeTX.]