TEXAS — Texas lawmakers are one step closer to passing a bill that would require power plants and electricity providers to weatherize their facilities.
The bill addresses a number of additional issues, including creating an emergency power outage alert system, and requiring utility regulators to regularly practice for emergencies.
It’s a major push from the legislature to address the disastrous failure of Texas power grid during February’s winter storm.
“I would argue that we can’t leave this session without passing this bill," said Rep. Chris Paddie, R-District 9.
As chairman of the House State Affairs committee, Rep. Chris Paddie is committed to getting Senate Bill 3 over the finish line and signed into law. The bill would require power plants to weatherize their facilities after February’s winter storm caused widespread power failures across the state.
“Our first goal was to identify where were the failures, the problem areas. And primarily those fell into three categories, so those were oversight and accountability, communication failures, and then the weatherization issues, and I think with SB3, I think we've addressed all of those things," said Paddie.
The House State Affairs committee unanimously approved the bill Tuesday night, with some changes, including only requiring certain natural gas facilities to weatherize.
“Not every gas facility out there in the state is related to the supply chain of electric generation and so in fact you have a lot of wells, in particular 70,000 or so, that are marginal wells and produce very little. If you start putting additional costs, unnecessary costs on those, it’s probably going to force those wells offline," said Paddie.
Lawmakers also removed wording that placed specific fees on solar and wind providers, which has environment and clean energy advocates breathing a sigh of relief.
"On the whole, you know, we think it's a much better bill now, and we'll take some important steps forward in making our grid more resilient, without attacking renewables," said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas.
But critics of the bill say it doesn’t go far enough to address the root problems with the grid.
“This bill really doesn't do anything except apply a few obvious band aids to the situation," said Ed Hirs, energy fellow at University of Houston. "It's all a way that the legislators can kind of say yeah we addressed it we papered it.”
The legislation would make power companies pay fines of up to $1 million for failing to weatherize their facilities.
But fines of more than $5,000 would only apply to the most extreme violations, which some say, isn’t enough.
“The reality is, you know, it would only be the absolute worst infractions that would even get more than a $5,000 fine. For single oil and gas well to weatherize we're looking at an average of $16,000," said Adrian Shelley, Texas office director for Public Citizen. "It's hard to see how that fine serves as any kind of an incentive for an oil well to weatherize, so we're very concerned that the fines are just not high enough.”
Additional issues this bill doesn’t address are increasing power generation capacity in the state or lowering energy demand in emergencies.
The bill is now headed to the House Calendars Committee, and expected to reach the governor’s desk by the end of the session.
“We want folks to know that we stay true to our word, that we honor that commitment we made at the beginning of session and we got it done on their behalf," said Rep. Paddie. "And they will continue to look for ways to improve it to hopefully ensure that we don't ever have situations like this happen again where 200 people lose their lives unnecessarily.”