Today, Life:Powered and Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) unveiled “Green New Deal Puts Texans in the Red,” a first-of-its-kind research project calculating the cost to implement the Green New Deal in the Lone Star State.

“Our research estimates the Green New Deal will increase the cost of electricity by more than 900% and kill over a million jobs,” said Life:Powered’s Jason Isaac. “Texas’ families, businesses, and economy can’t afford it — and it won’t even affect the climate. The Green New Deal is neither green, nor new, nor a deal for the Lone Star State.”

Key Takeaways:

  • Transitioning Texas to 50 percent wind and solar electricity generation by 2030 would cause annual costs to rise by 250 percent compared to 2018 costs. Reaching 100 percent wind and solar would increase costs by nearly 10 times.
  • Under the Green New Deal, the average Texas family’s annual electricity bill would rise from about $1,500 today to nearly $14,000 in 2030.
  • The total cost to implement the renewable electricity generation mandates of the Green New Deal in Texas would reach $120 billion per year in 2030—about equivalent to the State of Texas’ entire annual budget today.
  • Going 100% renewable would require more than 6 million acres (more than five times the size of Harris County) of wind turbines, solar panels, battery storage, and transmission lines, dramatically increasing our physical footprint on the environment.
  • If the Green New Deal’s renewable mandates were fully implemented by 2030, climate models suggest the global average temperature would decrease by less than a tenth of a degree: 0.097° Fahrenheit by 2050.

“When someone proposes an idea like the Green New Deal that will reorder the world, it’s important to ask the right questions, like is it feasible? How much would it cost? What would it do to the jobs of the men and women who work at places like this?” said Senator Cornyn.  “What we’ve learned here at Sunbelt Steel is it would put them out of business, and for what? There are a lot better ways for us to deal with our concerns about the environment: through innovation, entrepreneurs, smart people coming up with smart solutions to problems. To me, those sorts of innovative solutions make a lot more sense for the environment than new taxes, more government regulation, more control over our lives.  But I think the gentlemen we met who work at Sunbelt Steel and the families they represent are the ones that bring this story home to me the most.”