Today, the Texas Public Policy Foundation applauds the passage of House Bill 1500, which includes, among a number of electric grid reforms, a reliability requirement for new power plants and a mandate that the Public Utility Commission study the effect of allocating reliability costs to existing variable generators. Following the bill’s passage, Life:Powered Policy Director Brent Bennett released the following statement:
“We commend the legislature for passing HB 1500, which renews the Public Utility Commission on the condition that they take up needed market reforms, including Governor Abbott’s 2021 directive to ‘allocate reliability costs to generation resources that cannot guarantee their availability,’ and to ‘ensure that all power generators can provide a minimum amount of power at any given time.’ These reforms are critical in light of the federal government’s profligate spending on unreliable energy sources and onslaught of regulations on reliable energy sources.
“Ensuring a reliable Texas grid is not a one-time act but rather an ongoing process, and while the Texas Legislature did what it needed to do this session, the long timeline for implementing these reforms makes it imperative that the Public Utility Commission finish the cost allocation study before the next legislative session and move quickly to develop standards to ensure all generators in the ERCOT market are providing the reliability that we need.”