House State Affairs and Energy Resources met in a joint hearing on April 29th. The day’s agenda consisted of invited testimony to address Interim Charge 4: Examine the state’s portfolio of electric generation resources, including traditional sources, emerging renewable technologies, and energy efficiency. Determine whether the existing state regulatory programs and incentives are adequate to meet the energy needs of the future. Consider factors relating to reliability, requirements for additional transmission, or auxiliary services.
Public Utility Commission Chairman Barry Smitherman commented on the state’s growing population and offered more detail on the energy sources in Texas: 42% of power comes from natural gas, 37% from coal, 13.5% from nuclear, 6% from wind, and the rest from “other.”
Railroad Commission Chairman Victor Carrillo pointed out a total of 1.25 million oil and gas wells have been drilled in Texas so far. Today there are 7,500 active oil and gas operators. “We remain the number one oil and gas producing state in the U.S.,” he said. The state is also the #1 wind-power producing state in the country. Carrillo told the lawmakers that natural gas is gaining a larger share of the electric generation market because of the vast finds in places like the Barnett Shale in North Texas and the Haynesville Shale that straddles the Texas-Louisiana border. He estimates that 50 percent of all gas production in 20 years will be from shale formations.
Paul Sadler, Director of the Wind Coalition, spoke in regards to the discussion on whether too many subsidies were being devoted to the renewable sector in contrast to those offered to coal and gas generators. Sadler offered the 2008 report from Comptroller Susan Combs as evidence that virtually every energy source gets some kind of tax subsidy. “During the last decade, we spent more on non-CREZ (transmission) than we spent on CREZ,” Sadler said, referring to the $5 billion project to build the lines and towers that will transmit power from the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ).