Image via Canva Pro: ThomasVogel
By Matt Johnson
Our Legislative & Conservation Director had cause for optimism this spring that the big Texas utilities would invest more money in the best solution to our stressed-out electric grid: energy efficiency.
After all, the Texas Legislature is paying more attention to it. There are billions of dollars in new federal funds to help Texas families weatherize their homes and put solar on their rooftops. And despite billions of our hard-earned pay going to subsidize new, expensive fossil fuel power plants, those plants won’t come online for a few years and we have a few long, hot cruel summers to get through before that.
Surely these utilities would see all this and boost investment in their successful energy savings programs that lower our electric bills, right?
Wrong. Last month, the eight utilities (called transmission and distribution utilities or TDUs) that are responsible for meeting statewide energy savings goals submitted their plans for 2024 and 2025. TL;DR: they are pretty much the same as before.
Some of them have increased the size of some programs. Oncor, for example, which is the utility that owns the poles and wires that deliver electricity to homes across much of North Texas and down to Williamson County, is putting a little more into its residential programs. Centerpoint Energy, which serves the same purpose but in the Houston area and elsewhere, is increasing investment in commercial programs that help businesses become more energy efficient. And there are a few pilot programs that focus on heat pumps, electric vehicle charging, and smart thermostats. But the problem is scale.
If you put all these programs together, these utilities would invest roughly $152 million this year and next year. That’s an increase of about $11 million from last year. Not bad if it was for one utility, but this is for all TDUs. And there is no increase for programs serving our most vulnerable populations, so-called “hard-to-reach” customers.
What would $152 million in energy savings achieve? It would roughly save the grid 587 MW in peak use -- about the same power supplied by one medium-sized coal plant. To put it in context... The ERCOT grid needed more than 80,000 MW of power on 49 days last summer to keep the lights on. So a savings of 587 MW amounts to about 0.25 percent of overall energy use at peak. Again, scale is important.
The state agency that will approve these plans is the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT). They appear to be getting more serious about energy efficiency lately, too, having hired a Director of Energy Efficiency for the first time, and signaling they might open a rulemaking about it soon by submitting questions for the public to answer on these issues.
The PUCT also has some work to do. The Texas Legislature passed SB 1699 last year, which requires the state to expand what are called “demand response” programs. These are programs that pay customers to conserve energy. Right now, it’s mostly just big industries that require lots of power to operate (including crypto mining) that get paid to ramp down production when grid conditions get tight. While SB 1699 does not require utilities to meet a specific goal or budget amount, it encourages utilities to spend a portion of their programs on residential demand response.
Are utilities expanding their demand response programs? Not nearly enough (dive deep here). Are Texas families going to get paid to conserve energy? Not really. (Oncor is planning a small pilot project on it though.) Something doesn’t smell right. The Legislature and the PUCT both are saying they want to take this more seriously, but the utilities aren’t following along.
Utilities have extraordinary political power in Texas. They single-handedly killed the bill that would increase energy efficiency goals for the state for the last several legislative sessions. Gov. Abbott appoints the PUCT commissioners, so even though they have the authority to reject these weak plans, they’re unlikely to do so unless Gov. Abbott puts pressure on them.
That’s where you come in. Help us make some noise. Sign our petition to Gov. Abbott and demand he support programs and policies that help Texas families save money on their electric bills, save our grid, and bring more good-paying green jobs to Texas.