Texas over the past 15 years has been a bright spot for renewable energy development in the US, significantly outpacing the country as a whole (see chart below). With unprecedented load growth projected for the state, energy experts say the build out of renewables must accelerate. The Texas legislature has other ideas, however.

Senate Bill 388, proposed by State Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, is out of committee and expected to reach the Senate floor as early as this week. If passed, the bill would mandate that 50% of new power generation capacity in Texas come from natural gas or coal. In other words, the bill would force ERCOT to match any new megawatts from solar, wind, or batteries with the same number of new megawatts from natural gas or coal.

The bill, which comes as the natural gas industry is reeling from supply chain bottlenecks, would “bring economic growth in Texas to a screeching halt,” wrote Doug Lewin in The Texas Energy and Power Newsletter. “Given the current gas turbine shortage, there is no American energy dominance without renewables and storage,” he continued.

Chris Tomlinson, a columnist at the Houston Chronicle, was equally direct. “Blocking new renewable facilities from coming online until the natural gas industry can catch up makes no sense when every available megawatt is needed,” he wrote.

And SB 388 isn’t the only threat to renewables from this legislative session. Others include:

• SB 819: proposes additional permitting requirements for wind and solar projects that are not currently imposed on other energy sources like coal, gas, or nuclear.
• SB 714: directs ERCOT and the PUCT to adopt rules to eliminate or compensate for any electricity price distortions caused by federal tax credits for wind and solar power.
• SB 1665: delays approval of high-voltage transmission lines by proposing a study by the PUCT to assess the feasibility of constructing such lines as part of the Permian Basin Reliability Plan.

This leaves the renewable energy industry at crossroads: the Texas market wants more renewables, but the Texas government may vote to have less of them.

“Everyone is talking about how we need more power, yet at the same time we see proposals coming out of the Capitol that would make it much more expensive, more time consuming, or completely halt the ability to build wind and solar in the state,” said Laura Merten, manager of State Affairs for Apex Clean Energy, at an event in February hosted by EDPR.