AUSTIN — Texas has become ground zero in a GOP battle over energy, pitting a suburban populist right that seeks to throttle the state’s renewables program against the mainline Republican business establishment.
A similar red-on-red fight is taking place at the federal level, where Texas Rep. Chip Roy (R) has emerged as a leading voice calling for the full repeal of renewable energy tax credits established in 2022 under President Biden — setting himself against a group of Republican defenders of the subsidies.
But the conflict has roots in Texas, where it reflects a more fundamental struggle over the core principles of the state GOP and the legacy of establishment Republicans such as former President and Gov. George W. Bush — an unlikely godfather of the Texas and U.S. renewables programs.
‘Another attack on renewables’
The divisions are front and center in Austin as the legislative session reaches its last frenetic weeks, with largely rural GOP lawmakers pitted against those from the suburbs and exurbs.
Bills targeting wind and solar are “another attack on renewables that have responded to the market, that have met the needs of Texans and provided a lower cost utility rates,” state Rep. Drew Darby (R) told The Hill.
“Are they perfect? No. But do they have a place in the energy mix? Yes — and these bills are nothing more than an attack on their business model,” he said.
Darby, who has emerged as a key GOP proponent of renewable energy, is hardly anti-carbon: One of his bills this session would shield oil and gas companies from liability for dumping treated fracking fluid in creeks and rivers.
But his West Texas district hosts nearly 8 gigawatts of renewable energy production either installed or underway, promising billions in landowner royalties and local taxes.
All of that, he said, would be at risk if the state Legislature passes H.B. 3356, which seeks to make existing wind and solar producers responsible for providing power 24 hours a day — a measure that one pro-renewables GOP aide called “one of the worst energy bills I’ve ever seen.”
That bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Jared Patterson (R), who represents the conservative suburbs between Dallas and Fort Worth, argues that wind and solar have been “a disaster” for the state, and that the cheap energy they provide at peak production — energy many conservatives believe exists only because of federal subsidies — has crowded out “actually reliable power” from natural gas.
“The federal government is taking from one pocket to subsidize wind and solar, then the state takes from your other pocket to subsidize gas,” Patterson said.
His legislation has stalled, opposed by bipartisan business interests fearing closures of renewable facilities. But a series of Senate bills setting strict requirements favoring gas and limiting renewable development have passed and now await action in the House.
Wind and solar, gas and oil
One bill that cleared the state Senate last month would require new electric supplies to be at least 50 percent natural gas-powered, effectively throttling construction of renewables in a world where new gas turbines are nearly impossible to come by.
Another would impose new restrictions on where wind and solar can be built and create new points in the process for anyone within 25 miles to object.
That latter bill addresses “the recent proliferation of wind and solar facilities encroaching across Texas with no consideration or safeguards for landowners or the environment,” said state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R), who sponsored both bills and represents an exurban arc wrapping around Houston.
The debate among lawmakers such as Darby and Patterson is in part economic, as both acknowledged: Patterson’s district has no renewables, while for Darby’s they are a key economic lifeline.
But ideology could play a bigger role. Kolkhorst and state Sen. Kevin Sparks (R), who sponsored his chamber’s version of Patterson’s bill, both have substantial renewables-driven revenue to schools and local governments in their districts — $600 million for her, more than $4 billion for him. Nonetheless, they are at the forefront of a rebellion against the renewable policies set by earlier Republicans such as Bush and former Gov. Rick Perry, who championed wind and solar.
Under those leaders, a pro-renewable line was something close to GOP dogma. As governor, Bush presided over the electric market deregulation that allowed renewables to enter the Texas market — support he continued as president.
Perry, in turn, also threw his support behind energy expansion, backing the creation of high-capacity electric lines to bring power from the new West Texas wind farms east to the booming cities.
To former state Rep. John Davis (R), who supported the legislation that created those transmission corridors, and whose land in the Hill Country west of Austin holds seven windmills, the state renewables programs have been a boon. The regular checks from wind royalties bring a welcome consistency to agricultural life — allowing him to pay for needed infrastructure, including the dogs and fences that keep coyotes and bobcats from killing his baby goats.
“Wind turbines, I don’t have to mark them or castrate them or give them shots or medicine,” Davis said. “I used to cuss at the wind. Now I say, ‘turn baby turn.’”
But while that was a relatively uncontroversial position in 2015, Davis said, by 2021 it was something he had to “whisper” — the result of a new attack on the idea of “all of the above energy,” once a cornerstone of the Bush and Perry platforms.
A right-wing push
Davis credited that turn to an anti-renewables push as one funded by right-wing billionaires such as Tim Dunn and Farris and Dan Wilks.
Others pointed to the influence of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), whose donors include Dunn and whose former directors include Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation head who oversaw the creation of Project 2025.
That controversial playbook called for a full repeal of federal support for clean energy and a new government-led suppression of “extreme ‘green’ policies” that its authors argued aimed at “control of people and the economy,” and which they said had to be defeated before anything like a free market could emerge.
Brent Bennett, head of TPPF’s energy practice, argues that a focus on all forms of energy has been a dangerous mistake and rejects the bipartisan idea that more energy jobs are inherently a good thing.
“If one person could produce all the energy in the world, we’d be fabulously wealthy,” Bennett said.
So far, the state’s business lobby has blunted action against renewables, which a wide array of experts, including former leaders at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and the state utility regulator, have warned would raise electricity prices and risk blackouts.
After vehement opposition from the lobby, Bennett noted, the law that would have required wind and solar to provide power around the clock “is almost totally gutted,” including exempting projects with existing contracts.
To Darby, the pro-renewable representative from West Texas, opposition from groups such as TPPF isn’t hard to explain.
“They’ve been on the opposite side of a lot of these issues,” he said. “I mean, they are funded by oil and gas interested people.”
Renewables, he added, “are producing electrons that this state relies upon. Do we need more? I think we need a mix. We’re going to see more solar, more battery storage. I’m supportive of hydrogen, I’m supportive of nuclear, I’m supportive of geothermal, brine mining. We need all of that we’re going to need if we have a growing state.”
If the anti-renewables bills passed, he said, “landowners would be unable to achieve full value for their land. School districts, property appraisal districts would lose the value associated with those projects, and Texas would lose the energy associated with their generation.”
“What is good in that?” he asked.