AUSTIN — The House on Monday advanced legislation that would let Texas voters decide this fall whether to create a low-interest loan fund to encourage electricity and natural gas companies to weatherize their plants, wires, compressors and pipelines.
While it’s unclear if the Senate will buy into the idea, the legislation is part of the response to February’s winter storm by Speaker Dade Phelan and his leadership team.
State Affairs Committee Chairman Chris Paddie, R-Marshall, stressed that the power outages, which have been deemed a factor in the deaths of at least 151 Texans, had several causes.
But “the No. 1 contributor” was an inability to perform in subfreezing temperatures, which accounted for 30% of the electricity-generating capacity that was offline in the crucial days of Feb. 15-19, Paddie said.
Rep. Dan Huberty, a Republican from Humble who authored the two measures, urged the Legislature not to fail again to safeguard the state’s electric grid, as he said it did a decade ago.
“A reliable energy grid is one of the most important things that we have to provide for our communities to survive,” he said.
Referring to an ice storm that caused blackouts through much of the state, but became known as the “Super Bowl storm” because it snarled festivities surrounding the game that year in Dallas-Fort Worth, Huberty said lawmakers have to offer some wallet, not just suggestions.
“We’ve got to have the resources to start this because … in 2011 we made a huge mistake, right?” he said. “We should have fixed the grid in 2011 and we didn’t.”
Huberty’s proposed constitutional amendment, House Joint Resolution 2, was sent to the Senate by a vote of 126-18. House Bill 2000, an enabling bill, won tentative approval by the same margin. All 18 opponents of each were Republicans.
If approved, the legislation would start a revolving fund similar to the water infrastructure fund that lawmakers launched in 2013. The State Water Implementation Fund for Texas, or SWIFT, has helped spur more water reservoirs and water conservation and reuse projects.
Huberty’s plan would create the State Utilities Reliability Fund, or SURF. It also would be administered by the Texas Water Development Board.
In the House-passed version of the two-year state budget, a contingency rider parked in the bill’s “wish list” section would tap $2 billion of rainy day dollars to start SURF if voters approve.
In a sop to lawmakers, mostly from rural Texas, whose constituents have struggled with telework and remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic because of poor or nonexistent internet connections, the new financing mechanism would help broadband providers, not just water, electric and natural gas utilities and power generating companies.
The fund’s aim would be “supporting projects to weatherize facilities and provide resilience during periods of high demand,” the bill says.
Rep. Erin Zwiener, D-Driftwood, won adoption of language that would let “demand-side” reduction projects qualify for the attractive financing.
As an example, she said it might make loans to incentivize Walmarts to install equipment giving them ability to shut down all power in an emergency except for that used for refrigerators and freezers needed to keep food from spoiling.
“There’s a lot of gigawatts on the demand side that can be reduced at critical times,” said Doug Lewin, an independent energy consultant with Stoic Energy who applauded Zwiener’s amendment. “Demand side represents a lot of the potential reliability solution.”
HB 2000 could receive a final House vote as early as Tuesday.
