Solar Industry Panel Warns About 2025 Texas Legislature – pv USA Magazine

May 24, 2024 Eckhart Gouras

Earlier this week, BloombergNEF released its U.S. clean energy market forecast for the first half of 2024, which projects nearly 1 TW of new U.S. solar and wind generation capacity by 2035. A staggering 221 GW of grid energy storage system (BESS) capacity is forecast also available for this period. Texas tops the list in overall construction, and California leads in BESS deployments. They will be close to the level of solar installations in the Golden State.

Texas has long been a favorite for utility-scale solar developers due to its business-friendly environment and lack of significant local permitting systems.

At the RE+ Texas session titled “Don’t Mess with Texas: Opportunities and Challenges in Local Policy,” leading utility-scale solar developers were well represented by Barb Jacobs of Lightsource bp and Susan Williams Sloan of Orsted. Rounding out the panel were Mundo de la Fuente, a partner at the law firm K&L Gates, and Luke Metzger of the nonprofit Environment Texas. The session was moderated by Michael Lewis of Jewell & Associates, PLLC.

While a pro-business environment and regulatory system have attracted many renewable energy developers to Texas, the industry nearly fell off the cliff in 2023, when the Texas Legislature last convened. (The Texas Legislature only meets every two years for a 140-day period. Therefore, its next session will be in 2025.)

As the “Don’t Mess with Texas” session in Houston makes clear, a number of proposals have been put forward in 2023 aimed at curbing further renewable energy development in Texas. This is despite the fact that Texas has historically been very friendly to oil and gas development and commercial real estate development. That is why the initiatives of the Texas Legislature surprised many representatives of the photovoltaic industry. There is a good chance this will happen again in 2025.

The most problematic initiative was Senate Bill 624. Susan Sloan, director of government affairs and marketing strategy at Orsted North America, described the proposal this way:

“This would result in all (renewable energy) projects being declared operational and having to go through a permitting process from the PUC, which currently does not even regulate renewable energy development. So we wouldn’t be in compliance right away if the law was passed. Until we receive permission, we will not be able to conduct business. The permitting process hasn’t been set yet, and if you’re in a session where reliability is the number one issue the legislature wants to talk about and the PUC and ERCOT are currently struggling, this would be a colossal factor in unreliability.

In 2023, the Texas Legislature, Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and Texas power grid operator ERCOT were still grappling with the aftermath of the devastating freeze that hit Texas in February 2021. The historic freeze exposed the vulnerabilities of the ERCOT system and other energy infrastructure in standing.

Barb Jacobs of Lightsource bp, a joint venture between Lightsource Renewable Energy and energy giant BP, called SB 624 “by far the worst localization bill I have ever seen in any state.” And at Lightsource, Bishop Jacobs oversaw 24 states, so she had a pretty comprehensive overview of what was happening on the regulatory and permitting front across the United States.

Jacobs warned that the political situation in Texas has not improved since 2023. In fact, it has probably gotten worse. According to Jacobs: “There has been a dramatic change in political direction on renewables. This is very disturbing.”

Sloan urged the solar industry to be more proactive and communicative about what it is already doing in the industry: “Our companies are doing a lot of good, but it is not understood and appreciated. And we need to explain these things. “I think that overshadows a lot of the specific issues that the opposition is raising.”

Measures that solar developers are already taking include measures to prevent soil erosion, protect wildlife and landscapes, or carry out specialized surveys, for example in the case of wetlands. As Sloan also noted, renewable energy buyers increasingly want to know that “you have good development, construction and operation standards.”

It is clear that the industry can do even more. Mundo de la Fuente called for greater involvement of landowners. He cited a gala dinner for a new utility-scale solar project in Texas, to which the developer invited dozens of landowners with thousands of acres of land. De la Fuente is an experienced renewable energy lawyer, but this type of involvement was new to him. As he noted, landowners “get much more from their land than, for example, from grazing.” According to de la Fuente, these are the “real stakeholders” of the ground-based renewable energy project and should be included in the discussion.

Luke Metzger of the environmental organization Environment Texas also urged the industry to take the Solar Uncommon Dialogue seriously and adopt the recommendations that will be issued by the SUD. SUD is a collaboration between SEIA and various environmental groups to develop best practices that, in Metzger’s words, “will facilitate the rapid development of renewable energy sources while minimizing environmental impact.” Metzger also pointed to The Nature Conservancy, one of the groups supporting SUD, and their “Site Renewables Right” map of the United States. The SRR map highlights the most environmentally sensitive parts of the country, so these areas should not be targeted by renewable energy developers.

Metzger also noted a study conducted at the University of Texas that compared land used for oil and gas development in Texas with land used for solar installations. In 2014, before Texas’ last oil and gas boom, oil and gas occupied 514,000 acres in the state. ERCOT projects that solar will reach 27 GW of installed capacity in Texas this year, which will occupy just 162,000 acres. And the environmental impact of the latter is difficult to compare with the impact of these fossil fuel projects.

As the 2025 Texas Legislature begins work, it will be interesting to see what proposals emerge and whether 2025 will bring the same unpleasant surprises as the last legislative session in 2023. The Don’t Mess with Texas session certainly provided some useful information recommendations regarding the industry’s better positioning ahead of the 2025 session.