Houston Republic

The long-range forecast calls for another hot summer in Texas, but Lone Star State residents should be even hotter under the collar over hidden costs they pay for the energy to run air conditioning and fans, according to one analyst.

That’s the view of Bill Peacock, an Austin-based research analyst and writer, who wrote an essay about the topic for Texas Scorecard.

“The renewable energy industry and local economic development groups often tout the benefits of the renewables boom,” Peacock wrote. “For instance, the Greater Houston Partnership says that the ‘more than 30 wind-related companies’ in Houston “employ 766 workers with an average weekly wage of $2,694 — the second-highest weekly wage in the nation. Those jobs come at a high cost, however.

“Through 2016, those 30 companies benefitted from more than $4.2 billion in tax credit subsidies from the federal government.  Some directly, like generators NRG Reliant, BP, Pattern Energy, and EDP Renewables. Others indirectly, like GE Renewable Energy, which sells its wind turbines to the generators at subsidy-supported prices.”

These are facts — and numbers — that people paying the bills, both for their energy and their governments, need to know, Peacock said.

“Renewable energy subsidies have hurt the Texas electricity market — Texans — in numerous way,” he told Texas Business Daily. “First last year, it added as much as $4 billion to the cost of electricity in Texas, paid for by taxpayers and consumers. Second, it shifted billions of dollars away from investment in reliable sources of electricity into wind and solar farms that have made the grid less reliable. Third, it is undermining the world's most competitive and successful electricity market, leading regulators to ramp up intervention in the market and make Texas electricity less reliable and less affordable.”

He said wind energy is less reliable than energy produced from traditional sources for the simple fact that the wind doesn't blow all the time, especially when we need it most on hot summer afternoons. There never will be an affordable storage solution for this, Peacock said as batteries can never make wind energy affordable or reliable.

Author Robert Bryce recently estimated that ‘“storing the 9.6 terawatt-hours of electricity needed for California to get 80 percent of its electricity from renewables would require the state to install more than 700 million Powerwalls,” Tesla's latest storage battery.

Peacock said “simple physics” reveal the veracity of that claim.

“The amount of kinetic energy available in wind blowing over any given amount of land is far less than the energy available if that land was used to generate electricity from natural gas, coal, or nuclear fuel,” he said. “Then given the uncertainty that the wind will be blowing where a wind turbine is placed, it is ready to see how wind energy is both unreliable and inefficient. It can never be as affordable as energy produced from traditional sources.”

Peacock said wind, like other “alternative energy sources,” cannot compete on the open market and rely heavily on taxpayer assistance.

“Renewable subsidies have significantly increased the cost of electricity. But not just to consumers, or ratepayers,” he said. “Most renewable subsidies at the federal and local level come in the form of tax credits. It is taxpayers who bear these costs. But consumers pay too.

“Last year, in an attempt to address the reliability issues caused by wind and solar energy, the Public Utility Commission of Texas imposed a $3.9 billion electricity ‘tax’ on Texas consumers. This money was added to the market price of electricity and went straight to Texas generators, both traditional and renewable.”

That hidden tax encourages companies to depend on subsidies, not sales, in Peacock’s view.

“Businesses have for a long time exhibited a preference for using the government to take money from taxpayers rather than having to earn it through competition,” he said. “Texas electricity generators appear to have decided it is easier to get their share of the $3.9 billion electricity ‘tax’ that it would be to earn profits by marketing their product to consumers.