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Texas' GOP run Senate votes to kill Renewable Portfolio Stand. which made Texas wind-power leader
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/05/27/texas-flood-climate-wind-energy-column/28014511/(emphases my own)
In fact, Texas reached its 2025 goal of 10,000 megawatts of installed renewable energy capacity years ago. There's that much renewable energy for the taking. That's why many of the nation's clean energy jobs are being created in Texas.
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This is the way of the future. Yet, despite this incredible, and extremely profitable, growth in green energy in Texas, the state Senate just voted to kill the Renewable Portfolio Standard that incentivizes this kind of energy transition. Without the RPS, which built Texas leadership nationally on wind energy, the state could regress back into its old fossil fuel habits, which are the very dependencies that exacerbated the very droughts and flooding that we're trying to avoid. That would be a tremendous shame, and a hard hit to the state's economy.
That's why it's time to call a Texan bluff because it's not really about subsidies that Sen. Troy Fraser, author of the legislation to eliminate the RPS, is trying to end. If it were, then the state Senate would go after the [font color="red"]$1 billion[/font] in tax breaks given to the natural gas industry, paid for by the taxpayers of Texas. That's in comparison to the mere $12 million to $40 million needed to run the Renewable Portfolio Standard.
The fossil fuel industry has contributed heavily to Sen. Fraser, making this vote more about special interest lobbying than public interest policymaking.
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This is the way of the future. Yet, despite this incredible, and extremely profitable, growth in green energy in Texas, the state Senate just voted to kill the Renewable Portfolio Standard that incentivizes this kind of energy transition. Without the RPS, which built Texas leadership nationally on wind energy, the state could regress back into its old fossil fuel habits, which are the very dependencies that exacerbated the very droughts and flooding that we're trying to avoid. That would be a tremendous shame, and a hard hit to the state's economy.
That's why it's time to call a Texan bluff because it's not really about subsidies that Sen. Troy Fraser, author of the legislation to eliminate the RPS, is trying to end. If it were, then the state Senate would go after the [font color="red"]$1 billion[/font] in tax breaks given to the natural gas industry, paid for by the taxpayers of Texas. That's in comparison to the mere $12 million to $40 million needed to run the Renewable Portfolio Standard.
The fossil fuel industry has contributed heavily to Sen. Fraser, making this vote more about special interest lobbying than public interest policymaking.
Troy Fraser is, you guessed it, a Republican.
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