The Energy Markets Podcast S3 E11

Texas lawmakers just concluded their 88th biennial legislative session in Austin, and energy issues were very much at the fore as a range of proposals that would have incentivized investment in gas-fired generation and disincentivized renewables were hotly contested. 

The R Street Institute’s Josiah Neeley discusses the energy-related aspects of the session, which he said could have turned out much worse for consumers than it did. Many of the pro-gas, anti-renewable measures proposed in the Senate were rejected by the House, while others resulted in compromises that minimized the harm to electricity consumers.

“I would say that at the start of the session, if you looked at what was being proposed, the way I would put it was it was not just bad, but comically bad, you know, comic book villain bad, some of it. And what you ended up with was mediocre bad,” Neeley says. “I think consumers, they’re not going to get relief from their bills, but there will be some limitation in terms of how much they’re going to go up due to some of this stuff.”