Green Energy Jobs
Putting Texans to Work, Ensuring Our Power Grid and Cleaning Up Our Environment
Electricity is one of those things people take for granted— until it suddenly stops working and they realize how important it is to their quality of life. Businesses, however, pay careful attention to electricity and, in particular, want to ensure they will not have any interruptions that would put a halt on their operations or slow their productivity. Furthermore, both businesses and individuals are especially sensitive to energy spikes that drastically increase the cost of energy and can easily ruin an individual or business’s budget. That is why having access to reliable and affordable energy is absolutely core to the continued economic growth and development in Texas.
Unfortunately, for far too long, electric access has meant sacrificing our environment. We have some of the worst air and water quality in the country. This directly contributes to expensive illness and endangers the health of our citizens. It also threatens the Texas way of life—endangering fishing, hunting, hiking and even our agricultural industry, which is the second largest industry and employer in Texas. Governor Perry and Senator Hutchinson would like to bury their heads in the sand and ignore this problem. Each opposed the EPA’s plan to lower the acceptable smog levels in the air and said it would threaten business.
We believe this is not the case and, in fact, with bold leadership, we can secure reliable energy, decrease the cost for energy and insulate against price spikes while cleaning up our air and water. Mayor White continually talks about doing this, yet in his years at the Department of Energy, owning an oil company, and as Mayor of Houston, he has failed to address the problem. In fact, while he talks about how he worked to clean up Houston, the city was ranked in 2009 as one of Forbes Magazine’s “Most Toxic Cities.” The time for talk has come and gone and now is the time for action.
The Farouk Shami Energy Plan
Conservation
The first step to lowering electric bills for individuals and businesses and ensuring we have enough energy for everybody is to encourage conservation. The state government can do things as simple as changing out every light bulb in every state building to a compact fluorescent bulb and weatherizing the buildings to save on heating and air conditioning costs. Where necessary, they can replace or retrofit the heating and air conditioning units to more efficient systems. Local governments should be encouraged to take the same steps. Simply transitioning every stop light to a LED bulb would make a huge difference. Businesses and individuals could save significantly on their electric bills by reducing energy use and we need to employ a public education campaign to teach them what they can do and what it will do for their bill. However, some items, like replacing appliances and weatherizing their homes can be cost prohibitive, particularly to poorer families—those who benefit most from lowering their bill. That’s why we need programs in place that allow people to finance these modifications with no interest over 5 years, tied to the house itself (so if the house is sold, the loan is repayed in full as part of the closing).
Taking small steps like these can make a major impact. However, with the population growth Texas is experiencing and with the number of new businesses moving to Texas, merely using less energy will not solve our problems. We must increase our capacity as well.
Research and Development of New Technologies
Texas has always been the energy capital of the U.S., and we can be the green energy capital of the U.S. as well. The first step to achieving this goal is researching the technologies and optimizing them for use. For this reason, I propose creating a new fund, like the Emerging Technology Fund, focused solely on researching green technology. This fund would start with $500 million dollars. It would be available for use by those universities we have targeted to become “tier one” and will help them achieve that status. It will be used to create laboratories and bring in the top scientists and engineers in the world. Any and all patents that arise out of this research will be owned in part by the fund and the proceeds from these patents will be used to replenish the fund and continue its operations.
Training the Green Energy Workforce
We cannot bring these technologies to market without a workforce capable of implementing them. Texas already ranks second in the country in the number of green energy jobs. We can easily take the lead in this area by putting programs in place in our vocational schools that teach the skills necessary to work in this sector. We can then give scholarships to low income Texans to attend these schools and learn this trade. We can also give scholarships to low income Texans to attend university so they can train with and learn from the researchers brought in by the green energy fund.
West Texas—The Clean Energy Capital of the US
West Texas is already one of the country’s biggest producers of wind energy. The PUC has identified several competitive renewable energy zones (CREZ) that promise the greatest potential for energy. We need to rapidly expand the number of wind farms in these regions to take advantage of these areas. Furthermore, since wind typically blows at night and these areas have some of the highest number of sunny days in the country, we can put massive solar farms in place that will take advantage of the energy lines we are building to connect the CREZ to the great urban centers of Texas. Over the next decade, this region could easily produce enough energy to handle any increase in demand due to population and business growth and even alleviate current demand.
Household and Business Use
There are many households and businesses in Texas which are located in areas that are prime locations for solar panel installation. We ought to give franchise tax credits to businesses that build and install the panels. To enable individuals to take advantage of solar power, we need to work with the retail service energy providers to create a program where the retail energy provider will pay for the installation of the solar panels and then pay off those panels by buying back the energy from the household. We can provide tax credits to companies that do this to allow them to zero out the cost of the program for the expected payback period of the loan. Once the panel is paid off, the energy that is bought back can be directly refunded to the individual’s power bill at 75% of the current selling price of the electricity. This way, for some households, the amount of electricity they are reselling to the grid could completely offset the cost of electricity they are using from the grid.
Build Manufacturing Plants
In order to meet the demand for solar panels and wind energy turbines, many plants will need to be built. The state can use tax incentives, money from the Emerging Technology Fund, money from the Enterprise Fund and federal grants to encourage some of these plants to locate in areas whose average income is significantly below the average income of the county they’re located in. One condition of these incentives could be that the average wage at the facility must be at least $10 an hour. Furthermore, we can work with local officials on both sides of the Texas/Mexico border to encourage industry cluster development in the green energy sector. This will bring high skill, capital intensive plants to our border area that utilize low skill labor across the border.
Upgrade Transmission Lines and Create a Truly Smart Grid
We have already embarked on a project to build new transmission lines from the CREZ to the urban areas. We need to make sure these lines will have sufficient capacity to carry the energy these zones are capable of producing. We also must create a comprehensive 10-year plan that analyzes how much demand every part of the state might have and recommends additional transmission lines to satiate this demand.
Transmission service providers are already working to install new electric meters that can interface with appliances to find non peak times for their operation and inform people about every detail of their electric use. We need to continue pushing these out to all Texans and work to make our grid smarter and alleviate demand during peak times.
Close Coal Fired Power Plants
It's an inescapable and incontestable fact that coal fired power plants are polluting our air and water. While it’s good we did not build the additional plants TXU asked for in 2007, we must work to close those that remain. With the increased capacity brought onboard via implementing our green energy policy, we must gradually close these plants, starting with the worst polluters.
In the interim, it's essential to add better pollution control technologies to these plants to eliminate the mercury and other pollutants they are belching into our air. These pollutants precipitate out of the atmosphere and pollute our waterways and the wildlife they contain. That's part of our heritage that must be protected.
Encourage Use of Clean Energy in Cars
While electric vehicles do place additional strains on our power grid, they are non-polluting and far more efficient than gasoline powered cars. Biofuels and Compressed natural gas are cleaner technologies that can be utilized in vehicles, particularly those larger vehicles that currently run on diesel. We should immediately transition to either electric vehicles or Biofuel/CNG vehicles for all state cars, choosing the specific technology based upon the vehicle’s use. We can also strongly encourage local governments to do the same. Additionally, since both types of vehicle are not subject to the gas tax, individuals and businesses have a financial incentive to buy them. We can also rebate back a portion of the sales tax on these vehicles to provide an additional incentive.
Conclusion
Texas needs a bold plan to ensure every business and individual in Texas has access to affordable and reliable energy today and into the distant future. We also need to clean up our air and water and help make sure our grandchildren can take their grandchildren to fish and swim in our streams and hike and hunt in our great lands. Furthermore, we must make work to eliminate the health hazards in our air and water that are causing thousands of Texans to suffer from asthma and other disease every single year. We cannot afford to ignore these problems like Governor Perry and Senator Hutchinson, nor can we afford to merely pay them lip service like Mayor White. With Farouk Shami’s bold leadership, we can start solving them the day he takes office.
