The Houston Chronicle reports on increasing uncertainty among developers over federal and state actions to phase out key clean energy incentives. United's Doug Pietrucha warns that waning support for renewables could drive off private investment, derail long-planned energy projects, and increase costs for ratepayers statewide.
At a gathering of clean energy professionals in Austin last week, the same question came up again and again: Is Texas still a good place to build solar arrays and wind turbines?
Renewable energy companies are scrambling to mitigate damage from the Trump administration’s blows to their industry, including the Big Beautiful Bill’s rapid phaseout of existing federal subsidies for wind and solar projects.
But there’s also growing unease about the steady clip of failed proposals from Texas legislators to limit wind and solar energy’s ascendant growth in the state, even though none of the bills most concerning to the industry have yet become law.
Earlier this year, Texas lawmakers launched “what was really an unprecedented number of attacks on clean energy by sheer volume,” said Judd Messer, vice president of a trade association for the sector, at the Texas Clean Energy Summit conference in Austin.
The proposals varied in their methods: One required only wind and solar projects to receive permits before construction. Others would’ve effectively forced renewable energy companies to make payments to owners of fossil fuel power plants.
The bills were designed to slow down the sector, increase costs, “or to just outright stop clean energy development in Texas,” said Mark Stover, executive director of the Texas Solar and Storage Association.
”It's an all-hands-on-deck team effort to survive, advance and ultimately win,” Stover said of the trade association ultimately defeating those bills by the end of the regular legislative session this June.
Trump administration impacts
Still, some clean energy projects “that are on the bubble” are already starting to drop out as companies weigh the impacts of the Trump administration’s Big Beautiful Bill, said Doug Pietrucha, a policy analyst with Advanced Energy United, another trade group.
Those effects will hurt smaller developers the most, “which is heartbreaking,” said Adam Renz, director of project development at Pattern Energy, because “our wind and solar fleets in ERCOT, and storage, were built on the backs of really great, scrappy developers who have matured into strong organizations.”
Even for larger developers, the Trump administration’s various measures, including unexpected pauses or terminations of required federal approvals, could completely stop a project in its tracks, Renz said.
“We all have to have our heads on swivels with a Plan B, a Plan C, and in many cases, a Plan D,” he said. “Many of my colleagues who are focused on wind, it's been truly just terrifying to wake up some days.”
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