Speaker 1: Today's episode of the trib Cast is sponsored by the
Speaker 1: City of Corpus Christi, Texas Realtors and water Groves. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the trib Cast. I'm Eleanor Clibanoff, women's health reporter.
Speaker 1: I am not the women's health reporter at the Texas
Speaker 1: Tribune anymore.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is just like muscle memory.
Speaker 1: I'm Eleanor Klibanoff, as of today, the law and politics
Speaker 1: reporter at the Texas Tribune. Here with my as always
Speaker 1: with my co host, Matthew, editor in chief, still has
Speaker 1: the same job as he did yesterday.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but sometimes I've worked at the Tribune for ten years,
Speaker 3: but sometimes I still almost instinctively tell people that I'm
Speaker 3: a reporter from the Dallas Morning News.
Speaker 4: So I feel you.
Speaker 2: That's a deep cut for you, Matthew. Where in the
Speaker 2: world are you, Eleanor.
Speaker 3: I'm someplace warm. I have a place where the beer
Speaker 3: flows like wine, where beautiful women instinctively flock like the
Speaker 3: salmon of Capistrano. I'm talking about a little place like
Speaker 3: called Aspen.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: That, by the way, just before I creep anyone out.
Speaker 3: As a quote from Dumb and Dummer, I hope folks
Speaker 3: picked up on that.
Speaker 4: And I'm not just talking. Yes, I'm an Aspen.
Speaker 3: I am at a convenient of the American Academy of
Speaker 3: Arts and Sciences. It is almost too beautiful to bear
Speaker 3: out here. I'm angry to be inside recording for these
Speaker 3: forty five minutes and not outside.
Speaker 6: But yeah, that's what's that. I said. At least you
Speaker 6: have all those plugs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you had everything charging. It's a good chance
Speaker 2: to get charged up before you go back out.
Speaker 3: And Carlos, I unplugged that before we started recording, and
Speaker 3: I appreciate you bringing it up.
Speaker 1: We invite you to watch this episode on YouTube and
Speaker 1: you know, see the Matthews plug setup. Well, that sounds great.
Speaker 1: I am glad you're an Aspen. I'm not jealous at all. Actually,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, I weirdly am going to Aspen in
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks for a different conference. Apparently it's
Speaker 1: real conference season and Aspen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think so. I think so.
Speaker 3: I think you might be actually coming to the same
Speaker 3: place that I am right now. And I will tell
Speaker 3: you Eleanor it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: That's great. How are you with the altitude?
Speaker 3: I'm doing okay, okay, it's my flight in got canceled
Speaker 3: on Sunday night, so I had to spend a night
Speaker 3: in the crappy near the Denver Airport Hotel, which allowed
Speaker 3: me to adjust a little bit more, you know.
Speaker 2: Gradually to acclimatize.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I'm going, I'm going directly from New Orleans,
Speaker 1: which is like the lowest sea level to Aspen, which
Speaker 1: is like the highest, and so I think I might
Speaker 1: die anyway.
Speaker 4: Drink lots of water.
Speaker 3: Everyone has been telling me that, They're like, oh, you're
Speaker 3: from Texas, drink lots of water. Well, and then they're
Speaker 3: also like, we we in Colorado hate Texans.
Speaker 7: So this is a perfect segue to talk about our
Speaker 7: subject of the week, which is, you know, we've jokingly
Speaker 7: been calling this episode infrastructure Week.
Speaker 1: You know, as most people listening, I presume no. Yesterday
Speaker 1: was sineed. I the last day the legislative session, and
Speaker 1: a lot of times like the stuff that gets the
Speaker 1: biggest headlines or the you know, most the legislators certainly
Speaker 1: enjoy talking about a lot are sort.
Speaker 2: Of these.
Speaker 1: Culture war issues or sort of more social socially conservative
Speaker 1: issues obviously gets a lot of airtime, but a lot
Speaker 1: of what Texans care about has to do with our infrastructure,
Speaker 1: Can we keep the lights on? Can we keep water flowing?
Speaker 1: And so we wanted to talk today about what our
Speaker 1: lawmakers did on those issues and what the future of
Speaker 1: life in Texas looks like to do that. We are
Speaker 1: joined by Alejandra Martinez, the Texas Tribunes Environmental Reporter, and
Speaker 1: Carlos Nogeros Ramos, the Texas Tribunes Permian Basin Reporter.
Speaker 2: Welcome to both of you.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Quite a geographic spread we have.
Speaker 1: We've got Austin, Fort Worth, Odessa, and Aspith.
Speaker 8: Yeah yeah, yeah, we are all over.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. Well let's start with water.
Speaker 1: Hugely important topic this session the Texas Tribune, you know,
Speaker 1: specifically Alejandra, Carlos, your teams, especially with Jamie Lozanocarver. Did
Speaker 1: I believe more almost two dozen stories on the water,
Speaker 1: the state of the state's water systems, a phenomenal project.
Speaker 1: If you guys haven't taken the chance to look at
Speaker 1: these stories, I mean really just so comprehensive and really
Speaker 1: really accessible. It was a huge topic of conversation this session.
Speaker 1: So Ali, why don't you start by telling us why
Speaker 1: why water?
Speaker 2: And why now? Like why this?
Speaker 1: Why are we now talking about water. What's the state
Speaker 1: of the crisis.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, not to be an alarmist,
Speaker 9: but I mean in the state, Texas is running out
Speaker 9: of water and pretty fast.
Speaker 8: There's a lot.
Speaker 9: Of things threatening our water supply. There are aging pipes
Speaker 9: that are leaking, and that's like old old infrastructure, sometimes
Speaker 9: hundreds of years old, still under the ground and piping
Speaker 9: our water that hasn't been repaired or upgraded. There are
Speaker 9: drought pressures that are only really worsening with climate change.
Speaker 9: And then we have the population growth these booming areas
Speaker 9: across the state. I think DFW is going to need
Speaker 9: more like about half as more as it requires now
Speaker 9: in a couple of years. And so there's all these
Speaker 9: things really squeezing our water resources. And you mentioned the
Speaker 9: series Running Out where we documented all these different aspects
Speaker 9: of what's happening with our water supply and the state
Speaker 9: part of that series, we used state data from the
Speaker 9: Texas Water Development Board to look at what is our
Speaker 9: long term water supply and how long is that gonna last.
Speaker 9: And one instament that showed that Texas towns and cities
Speaker 9: will and I'm saying will not could will face a
Speaker 9: water shortage by twenty thirty, you're talking about five years
Speaker 9: from now. This is if there's a historic drought like
Speaker 9: we saw in the nineteen fifties and if no water
Speaker 9: solutions are implemented.
Speaker 8: And so water was a.
Speaker 9: Pretty big deal, and our state leaders took note of that.
Speaker 9: You had Governor Greg Abbott that made water, who made
Speaker 9: water an emergency item and called really early in the
Speaker 9: session for a quote like Texas Wide investment to water.
Speaker 9: And so there were all these different things that people
Speaker 9: were paying attention to and that people had been noticing
Speaker 9: in these last couple of years, with like the intense
Speaker 9: droughts that we've been having across the state, the continuous
Speaker 9: boil water notices that happened because water pressures are down
Speaker 9: doue to old infrastructure, and so really they want really
Speaker 9: this session, they'd geared down and started figuring out.
Speaker 8: What can we do?
Speaker 9: And I guess they're so like, where did we end
Speaker 9: up with? Right, you mentioned Siany die was yesterday and
Speaker 9: after a lot of debate and discussion, which we should
Speaker 9: definitely get to later, all the water drama that was
Speaker 9: happening at the Capitol, but the final deal that came
Speaker 9: out would allocate one billion dollars a year starting in
Speaker 9: twenty twenty seven until twenty forty seven to secure the
Speaker 9: state's water supply. That's twenty billion dollar dollars in total,
Speaker 9: and that money would be used for new water quote
Speaker 9: new water supply projects is what they call it, which
Speaker 9: is desalination, which is removing minerals and salt from brackish
Speaker 9: groundwater that's that really salty water. Or another solution is
Speaker 9: repairing old infrastructure conservation and flood mitigation projects. And so
Speaker 9: that one billion dollar will be a ballot amendment measure
Speaker 9: that voters will get to, you know, castor ballots and
Speaker 9: vote on this upcoming November. So that's one piece of
Speaker 9: the bucket. And then the second piece of the bucket
Speaker 9: is a one time investment of two point five billion
Speaker 9: dollars into the water fund that came out of the
Speaker 9: current budget surplus. So you have billions of dollars that
Speaker 9: were secured this session for water.
Speaker 8: Is that enough? We know that it's not right.
Speaker 9: There are a lot of of amazing thing tanks like
Speaker 9: Texas twenty thirty six and others that have made.
Speaker 8: Their estimates of how much is needed.
Speaker 9: Sometimes I think that estimate's like hundreds of billions of dollars. So,
Speaker 9: but it is one step forward, is what water experts
Speaker 9: and water lobbyists are saying.
Speaker 3: Oh, I want to drill a little bit deeper into
Speaker 3: that last point that you made. Right, So, the Texas
Speaker 3: twenty thirty six report you're talking about, I'm citing a
Speaker 3: story that you wrote here, was that the state needs
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty four billion dollars by twenty fifty.
Speaker 6: Right, So when you.
Speaker 3: Hear twenty billion dollars plus another two point five you think, wow,
Speaker 3: twenty two point five billion dollars. That's a lot of money,
Speaker 3: But that's a lot less than one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: billion dollars by twenty fifty. I mean, what's the what's
Speaker 3: the mood among the people who have been calling for this,
Speaker 3: you know, in the.
Speaker 4: Lead up to this session? Is this is it? Yeah?
Speaker 4: This is great? We did what we need to do.
Speaker 4: Is it okay, this is a good start?
Speaker 6: Or is it?
Speaker 4: Oh god?
Speaker 3: You know this was the big moment when everyone was
Speaker 3: rallied around this and we didn't even you know, get
Speaker 3: to half of what some people said we needed up
Speaker 3: until this time.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think the mood is it's a great start.
Speaker 9: I mean a lot of these water experts and lobbyis
Speaker 9: are just, I think, in some ways happy that the
Speaker 9: issues like finally getting attention. You have a senator at
Speaker 9: the capital, Senator Charles Perry, who's been advocating for water money,
Speaker 9: like any funding for water for I think over a decade.
Speaker 9: And so there's been a few number of people who
Speaker 9: have been really pushing for this kind of water investment,
Speaker 9: but it wasn't until like this year that it seemed
Speaker 9: like more people got on board or understood what.
Speaker 8: Is happening.
Speaker 9: I think a lot of recent events added to that.
Speaker 9: I mean, I know God Loos who's on this quote too,
Speaker 9: Like he wrote about I don't remember if it was
Speaker 9: Odessa or Milan, but cities in West Texas with continuous
Speaker 9: boiled water notices.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 9: So there's like more and more communities facing those immediate
Speaker 9: problems or issues because of our water systems.
Speaker 8: Right. And so I will note that also last session.
Speaker 9: There was a dedication for water funding, nothing as big
Speaker 9: as this session, but I think it's like what I'm
Speaker 9: hearing is like these baby steps are what's gonna build
Speaker 9: or get us somewhere bigger.
Speaker 8: Right. So, although we had one of the what.
Speaker 9: They're calling the biggest investments for water in Texas history.
Speaker 9: They're gonna come back next session and push for more.
Speaker 1: And I'm hearing Carlos, I want to ask, like, you're
Speaker 1: in the Permian Basin, like a region that you know,
Speaker 1: as I understand it is really hopefully going to benefit
Speaker 1: from some of this water money. I mean, what's the
Speaker 1: outlook there for water and what are you sort of
Speaker 1: hearing about, uh, you know, how this deal is being
Speaker 1: received in that area.
Speaker 5: I would agree with Alejandra's assessment that there is a
Speaker 5: lot of buzz and excitement. We will take anything we
Speaker 5: can get. You know, the water boil notices that I
Speaker 5: wrote about was because I lift them.
Speaker 6: You know, we were without.
Speaker 5: Water for almost a day, and before I had moved,
Speaker 5: I had moved to Odessa a year before the city
Speaker 5: had been without water for two days, and that was
Speaker 5: an infrastructure issue more than it was a money problem.
Speaker 5: And so, you know, like she said, we you know,
Speaker 5: if there's a solution, we we want because the ones
Speaker 5: we have now are limited. The Texas Water Development Board
Speaker 5: is limited in what the authority it has and the
Speaker 5: and the money it can distribute, and so yeah, it's
Speaker 5: you know, it's it's good news. I would also say
Speaker 5: I covered water from the oil and gas industry standpoint,
Speaker 5: and you know, among among uh these these folks, you know,
Speaker 5: there is a sense that you can't just throw money
Speaker 5: at a problem and expect it to kind of make
Speaker 5: it go away or disappear. And so there was a
Speaker 5: conversation here around what the oil and gas industry could
Speaker 5: contribute into the water dielemma, considering that it's an industry
Speaker 5: that requires so much water to operate and run. And
Speaker 5: as you know, we broke records last year for oil
Speaker 5: and gas production. This year we are set to do
Speaker 5: the same. I mean, we are drilling for so much
Speaker 5: oil and gas, which takes water and so but you know,
Speaker 5: from under the earth also comes water. And you know,
Speaker 5: the question was can can we clean this water or
Speaker 5: can we treat it to a standard that is acceptable
Speaker 5: to the agency and safe for conception. But guess what,
Speaker 5: that's also going to require so much money because it
Speaker 5: takes infrastructure, it takes energy to clean it. And then
Speaker 5: you know, once you do, how do you get it
Speaker 5: to the places where it needs to go? You know,
Speaker 5: do we build pipelines and then do we have a
Speaker 5: workforce that's able to build that, and so it's a
Speaker 5: it's a it's a dilemma with with a lot of
Speaker 5: moving parts, and so certainly people say, you know, this
Speaker 5: is a good start, but certainly nowhere near the finish
Speaker 5: line either.
Speaker 3: It was interesting, I'll a be there was a lot
Speaker 3: of agreement on the idea that we need to do
Speaker 3: something about water, but there was a lot of disagreement
Speaker 3: in how to go about doing that. I think like
Speaker 3: one of the big questions, right is, if you're going
Speaker 3: to solve the water problems, you can create more supply
Speaker 3: or you can patch up and fix a lot of
Speaker 3: that infrastructure. Right, Like, one of the big issues driving
Speaker 3: this water problem isn't just that we don't have enough water.
Speaker 3: It's that a lot of the water that we have
Speaker 3: is being leaked into the ground via pipes. You know,
Speaker 3: there's Carlos mentioned the problems in Odessa. There's things like
Speaker 3: that happening all over the state. And there seemed to
Speaker 3: be some disagreement among lawmakers right about whether which of
Speaker 3: those two things to invest more in the supply or
Speaker 3: the patching up of the pipes. Can you talk a
Speaker 3: little bit about that conversation and where we landed there.
Speaker 9: Yeah, this is definitely where the water drama happened.
Speaker 8: The how are you going to spend this?
Speaker 9: The allocation of this money, right the leaky pipes versus
Speaker 9: new water supply, which it could include like desalination or
Speaker 9: treating oil field wastewater, that godless is mentioning.
Speaker 8: And so at the early.
Speaker 9: Start of the sessions, there were kind of these two
Speaker 9: proposals that were put up, one by Senator Charles Perry
Speaker 9: that kind of divided those buckets of money into an
Speaker 9: eighty twenty split. Eighty percent of that fund would go
Speaker 9: to new water supply projects, desalination, treating oil field wastewater,
Speaker 9: and then the remaining twenty percent would go to everything
Speaker 9: else that includes infrastructure, conservation, water vus aquafer storage, recovery projects.
Speaker 9: So and then the other proposal, which was by Representative
Speaker 9: Cody Harris, kind of made the allocation and said, you know,
Speaker 9: the Texas Water Development Board will know where best to
Speaker 9: spend this money because they're the ones they're the agency
Speaker 9: that have the biggest connection with communities across the state,
Speaker 9: and the Water Board knows best. And so this is
Speaker 9: where that kind of fight over the ratio, the split
Speaker 9: grew more heated and heated over the course of the session.
Speaker 9: We had water experts and lobbyists at first being kind
Speaker 9: of hesitant to speak speak for or against that ratio
Speaker 9: or split in fear that you know, speaking about it
Speaker 9: would put in jeopardy any type of water funding.
Speaker 8: Right. These are people that are finally like, yay, we're.
Speaker 9: Finally talking about water funding, and you know, if we
Speaker 9: say the wrong thing, maybe everything will come undone and
Speaker 9: no more water funding. So but as the session you know, progressed,
Speaker 9: and they saw that, you know, these bills weren't coming
Speaker 9: out of committee, or they were being delayed on the process,
Speaker 9: or they weren't getting put on the House or Senate floor,
Speaker 9: more and more of them started speak up against and
Speaker 9: and it was and when they spoke up, it was
Speaker 9: against this eighty twenty ratio, led by their quote water
Speaker 9: champion Senator Charles Perry, who finally put.
Speaker 8: Water on the map at the Capitol. And so it was,
Speaker 8: it was very it was.
Speaker 9: It required a lot of conversation with different people because
Speaker 9: so many of them were at many times hesitant to
Speaker 9: go on the record because of what I just explained.
Speaker 9: Putting water funding in jeopardy, but knew that or they
Speaker 9: felt that that split wasn't the best because they were
Speaker 9: very concerned about, why are we going to start creating
Speaker 9: new water supply right when we haven't fixed our infrastructure,
Speaker 9: so we're just gonna pump more water for it to
Speaker 9: leak out of our aging pipes. It just they didn't
Speaker 9: agree with that approach, and so so what we ended
Speaker 9: up with, or what they ended up with and landed at,
Speaker 9: was that a fifty to fifty split.
Speaker 8: So the first half of the money would go to
Speaker 8: all of the projects.
Speaker 9: Conservation water we use, dsal of seawater, brackish ground water,
Speaker 9: and developing reservoirs, and then the remaining would go to
Speaker 9: the Water Development Board, which what we heard has identified
Speaker 9: a number of projects that already need that money, and
Speaker 9: they will determine which of those projects will get it.
Speaker 9: I think a lot of people are interested on like
Speaker 9: what projects end up getting that money after that really
Speaker 9: like back and forth debate over new water and infrastructure,
Speaker 9: and that's what we'll have to see in the next
Speaker 9: couple of years as that money starts rolling out.
Speaker 1: And all hundred just sort of to tie up this issue,
Speaker 1: it now will go to the voters, right, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, do they anticipate this will pass? Like it
Speaker 1: seems like an issue people are sort of generally supportive of,
Speaker 1: but it's a pretty big price tag.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think there have been a couple of surveys
Speaker 9: that were done ahead of session of do voters want
Speaker 9: more money to go towards water? And I think and
Speaker 9: overwhelmingly so, they were overwhelmingly supportive of that. The people
Speaker 9: that they that these organizations surveyed, and based on conversations
Speaker 9: I've been having, there are no worries there. But we'll see,
Speaker 9: you know, we'll see when the election comes around.
Speaker 4: It's a slam dunk, it'll pass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a certainly feels like a thing people are.
Speaker 1: It's very tangible to be like, you know, do you
Speaker 1: want to be able to have water? It's hard to
Speaker 1: vote no on that, though some people, I'm sure find
Speaker 1: a way. Well, let's take a quick break and think
Speaker 1: our responds. Today's episode is supported by Corpus Christie Water.
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Speaker 1: for Texans now and for generations to come more at
Speaker 1: watergrows dot org. Well, let's turn out to the other
Speaker 1: major issue that gets people a little stressed out, which
Speaker 1: is the grid and our energy infrastructure.
Speaker 3: I would just like to just to say that there
Speaker 3: are way more than two of issues that get people.
Speaker 1: Two issues that stress Texans out. Survey says only two.
Speaker 1: Everyone is so calm about everything else. No one is
Speaker 1: freaking out about th HC or bail or you know
Speaker 1: anything else.
Speaker 4: Sorry, mess up your flow.
Speaker 2: Fine.
Speaker 1: Texas is expecting well, let me say this, if you're
Speaker 1: not freaking out about the grid, stand by uh. Texas
Speaker 1: is expecting the state's energy demand to double in the
Speaker 1: next six years. Uh, it's really unclear for we'll be
Speaker 1: able to sort of meet that demand and keep up
Speaker 1: with with that. This was such a huge issue on
Speaker 1: people's minds. You know, when we had winter storm or Yuri.
Speaker 1: I was I say winterstorm Uri.
Speaker 3: Anyways, so they had the freeze. I don't mean the
Speaker 3: name Uri is faked, to be clear, I mean calling
Speaker 3: winter storms names of shakes.
Speaker 1: The freeze of twenty twenty one in the middle of session,
Speaker 1: you know, put this issue really in the spotlight. Carlos,
Speaker 1: I know you've been covering this sort of whole infrastructure
Speaker 1: of the energy infrastructure. How big of an issue was
Speaker 1: this for lawmakers this session?
Speaker 5: First, I just have to say I'm glad we're having
Speaker 5: this conversation now because I'm working on my story that
Speaker 5: I have to file, and it'll be nice to have
Speaker 5: this fresh in my mind. And maybe I'll just take
Speaker 5: what I said here and just put it into words
Speaker 5: and be done.
Speaker 6: With my story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, brainstorm out loud.
Speaker 4: I want to contributor to tag on the site exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the trade cast contributed.
Speaker 5: A couple bylines here. Yes, a pretty substantial deal, I
Speaker 5: would say. Ever since twenty twenty one, grit catastrophe the
Speaker 5: Texas experienced I think kind of inspired a sense that
Speaker 5: the legislature needed to do something about grid, something that
Speaker 5: had not significantly acted on before twenty twenty one. And
Speaker 5: the question, you know, the central question became, how do
Speaker 5: we keep people's lights on when this happens again in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty one. Immediately following Yurea, I was just talking
Speaker 5: about this with Pat Wood, who's the former chairman of
Speaker 5: the Public Utility Commission, And immediately after twenty twenty one,
Speaker 5: it was a response plan, you know, how do we
Speaker 5: fix what's broken now? And then in the twenty twenty
Speaker 5: three session is how do we encourage more more infrastructure
Speaker 5: because if you don't know this, we have an energy
Speaker 5: only market in Texas, which excuse me, an open energy
Speaker 5: market in Texas, which means that power generators to people
Speaker 5: who give us the resources that convert into electricity what
Speaker 5: we call megawats or gigawatts. The natural gas plants, wind
Speaker 5: and solar farms, battery storage needed to shore up infrastructure
Speaker 5: right so that they can meet the demand. So how
Speaker 5: do we as a legislature speed that up? And so
Speaker 5: we came with a couple of ideas. Some worked others didn't.
Speaker 5: There were there were some performance credits that were floated
Speaker 5: around that ultimately fell through. And then we had the
Speaker 5: Texas Energy Fund, which had five billion dollars injected into
Speaker 5: it in twenty twenty three and it all went to
Speaker 5: natural gas infrastructure. Those plants are years away from being built,
Speaker 5: and you know, through all of these short term solutions,
Speaker 5: the question still was how do we make the grid reliable?
Speaker 5: Because so far the answers that we have are very
Speaker 5: very far away down the timeline. Meanwhile, guess what's happening.
Speaker 5: Texas is growing. We have people moving here, businesses want
Speaker 5: to come here. We are becoming a hub for data centers.
Speaker 5: And so for the legislature, you know, now it wasn't
Speaker 5: just a question, it's can we UH ensure that the
Speaker 5: grid is reliable without blocking business development? You know, can
Speaker 5: we still assure people that Texas is a place that
Speaker 5: you can come tap into our grid and we won't
Speaker 5: put too many hurdles UH to do that. And so
Speaker 5: that's what UH. That was the that was at the
Speaker 5: center of or at least my coverage. Senate Bill six UH,
Speaker 5: sponsored by State Senator King Phil King, you know, puts
Speaker 5: UH wide in place wide ranging rules around energy use,
Speaker 5: energy users, particularly the industrial customers. I'm talking manufacturing plants,
Speaker 5: you know, oil and gas plans, you know, hospitals for example,
Speaker 5: big data centers, people who just suck up.
Speaker 6: A lot of a lot of the energy, a lot
Speaker 6: a lot of new rules there.
Speaker 5: Ericot for example, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, you
Speaker 5: know how now has the latitude to to shut off
Speaker 5: power to plans over seventy five megawatts. So if you're
Speaker 5: a mom and pop, that doesn't apply to you. Just
Speaker 5: want to make that really clear. But you know, this
Speaker 5: is this is unprecedented, it's it's very new. It gives
Speaker 5: us a lot of unilateral authority. And there's this course
Speaker 5: language that was put in there to make people a
Speaker 5: little bit more comfortable around the concept. But it's still
Speaker 5: needing the remote disconnection or what people avoid calling the
Speaker 5: kill switch.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: There was also a big question around if you know,
Speaker 5: we're going to grow as a state and we're going
Speaker 5: to deliver the nearly double amount of electricity that you
Speaker 5: mentioned earlier, who is going.
Speaker 6: To pay for that?
Speaker 5: You know, who's going to pick up the tab? Because
Speaker 5: for that we need to build infrastructure to deliver electricity,
Speaker 5: and usually the people who end up paying for that
Speaker 5: is everyone on this call, you know, the everyday electricity
Speaker 5: user transmission costs. That's how they're allocated. And so in
Speaker 5: this bill, you know, there were questions about, you know,
Speaker 5: can these can these industrial facilities put a little bit
Speaker 5: more money up front so that in the long term
Speaker 5: it doesn't run at the tab on our utility bills.
Speaker 5: So that's just one of many things. I mean, I
Speaker 5: have like a whole page of notes, but that that
Speaker 5: was like the kicker I think for this session as
Speaker 5: far as energy is concerned. And then of course something
Speaker 5: that never misses in Texas is the politics of renewable
Speaker 5: energy and how much we want them to be here, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the Senate Bill six, I mean obviously
Speaker 1: a very high priority number or a low number of
Speaker 1: high priority pretty surprise, like Texas famously very anti regulation,
Speaker 1: anti you know, sort of putting these sort of rules
Speaker 1: in place for businesses and major manufacturers and things like that.
Speaker 2: How was that.
Speaker 1: Received by like the business world, let's say.
Speaker 5: A lot of trepidation around the specifics. I think something
Speaker 5: everyone agrees on is that the grid needs to be
Speaker 5: more reliable, that benefits everybody in the long term, you know,
Speaker 5: when when there's another Yuri, which will happen. To be clear,
Speaker 5: everyone needs to have wants to have electricity. But but
Speaker 5: the devil was in the details for for a lot
Speaker 5: of these for a lot of these folks, and and
Speaker 5: there was concern around you know, you can't just shut
Speaker 5: us off like that. And then if you if you
Speaker 5: just say, like for example, it only applies to facilities
Speaker 5: of seventy five mega Watson Apple, that could be a
Speaker 5: hospital too, So are you're shutting off a hospital if
Speaker 5: you if the grid needs to reroute electricity elsewhere, And
Speaker 5: so I think for folks it comes down to the rulemaking.
Speaker 5: So what that means is that the agency is involved
Speaker 5: in us in this. The Public Utility Commission will need
Speaker 5: to come up with the specifics and I think in
Speaker 5: the coming months that's uh, that's where the conversation will
Speaker 5: play out. But coming back to your question, I'm sorry,
Speaker 5: a bit of a tangent. They're coming back to your question.
Speaker 5: I yeah, a lot of a lot of trepidation around
Speaker 5: the remote disconnection, you know, the red tape. There were
Speaker 5: questions about whether you know it's this helping costs is
Speaker 5: this helping reliability you know, business arrangements between a natural
Speaker 5: gas plant and a data center. You know, er Cotton
Speaker 5: now has oversight over that, and so for folks it's
Speaker 5: you know, how does that help you know, the residential
Speaker 5: consumer in the long run when this is an individual
Speaker 5: business agreement. But I think ultimately people were you know,
Speaker 5: amenable to are amicable to the idea of a bill
Speaker 5: that gives the grid more security.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean ultimately what I think, correct me if
Speaker 3: I'm wrong, Carlos was driving a lot of this fear. Right,
Speaker 3: It was specifically the addition to the grid, the projections
Speaker 3: of editions of data centers, bitcoin miners, and a lot
Speaker 3: of these sort of new technology uses, you know, where
Speaker 3: in some cases the state really wants to attract this right.
Speaker 4: We want to be a leader in AI. We want you.
Speaker 3: Know, a lot of our state leaders have really kind
Speaker 3: of extended a hand to the crypto industry and everything
Speaker 3: like that. But the just massive amounts of power that
Speaker 3: those facilities require was scary to a lot of people,
Speaker 3: particularly to a lot of politicians who I think felt
Speaker 3: no stronger blowback in the past few years than what
Speaker 3: happened in that twenty twenty one winter storm and a
Speaker 3: feeling like if we go through something like that again.
Speaker 3: And the reason we went through it was because Texas
Speaker 3: sort of just rolled out the red carpet to these
Speaker 3: massive industrial uses that don't really individually create you know,
Speaker 3: there's not a lot of people actually working in those facilities, right,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of skepticism around, you know, particularly
Speaker 3: the crypto industry, that they need to be able to
Speaker 3: do something to avoid that because you know, among the
Speaker 3: things they're going to piss off their voters the most
Speaker 3: would be.
Speaker 4: Allowing something like that to happen again.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 5: The driver of this conversation was the forecast that came
Speaker 5: out that you know, put out us a number that
Speaker 5: scared everyone and said, well, you know, how.
Speaker 6: Do we respond to this? Uh?
Speaker 5: You know, twenty years ago we broke up monopolies. Uh,
Speaker 5: and and that move, you know, gave out a you
Speaker 5: know what they call it market signal for people to
Speaker 5: come here and do and do business. But then it
Speaker 5: started straining us in other ways. So how, you know,
Speaker 5: how do we come up with a political response to this?
Speaker 5: What is what is the appropriate amount of policy? But yes,
Speaker 5: that was data centers and the oil and gas industry
Speaker 5: were absolutely what drove the conversation.
Speaker 6: In this session.
Speaker 2: Matthew, where did you go.
Speaker 4: Housekeeping? From my hotel? I was knocking down the door.
Speaker 4: I tried to make it smooth, but.
Speaker 2: Thank you figure out I had to know. I had
Speaker 2: to know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I think that's all really, I think, Matthew,
Speaker 1: that's a very strong point too, about like also just
Speaker 1: the timing of the storm being like in the middle
Speaker 1: of a session. I think about I was not here
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, but like I arrived, not why
Speaker 1: I arrived not long after the storm, and just the
Speaker 1: way that like now like people everyday Texans like know
Speaker 1: what Urkot is and have an opinion on it is
Speaker 1: so telling of like you never want to have to
Speaker 1: know what Urkot is. Like in an ideal world, I
Speaker 1: think Urkott would prefer that nobody knows what they are
Speaker 1: or what they do, just because like that means things
Speaker 1: are probably working the way they're supposed to. And so
Speaker 1: now you know a lot of scrutiny in recent years as.
Speaker 3: Can we talk just briefly about what if anything the
Speaker 3: legislature did related to green energy? I mean One of
Speaker 3: my favorite topics is this sort of contrast right where
Speaker 3: state leaders have largely been opposed to the idea of,
Speaker 3: you know, really pushing and incentivizing green energy, while at
Speaker 3: the same time, Texas has seen a massive increase in
Speaker 3: green energy energy production, far out pacing places like California
Speaker 3: where there seems to be a much more political will
Speaker 3: to to grow that. How has that industry come out
Speaker 3: of this session?
Speaker 6: Do you think unscathed? I will say it's funny.
Speaker 5: One of the things that I was talking to Doug
Speaker 5: Lewin about, the author of the Texas Power and Energy
Speaker 5: newsletter and an expert in this industry, is that the
Speaker 5: this session wasn't defined not UH was defined not only
Speaker 5: by what passed, but also by what didn't. Like the
Speaker 5: last session, there there were bills targeting renewables UH directly,
Speaker 5: for example, a repeat of Senator Lewis cole course UH
Speaker 5: looking to put a lot of red tape on renewable
Speaker 5: energy development. You know, the way renewable energy has has
Speaker 5: done so well in Texas is because you can just
Speaker 5: go up to a private property owner, come up with
Speaker 5: a business arrangement, set up a royalty system, a payout
Speaker 5: for that person and then you just put your uh,
Speaker 5: you know, your window solar farm there so long as
Speaker 5: you can follow the rules around that. And there are
Speaker 5: also federal stipulations in that. But Senator col course did
Speaker 5: not like that they expanded really fast and thought that
Speaker 5: it merited a little bit more scrutiny, uh.
Speaker 6: Which garnered a lot of backlash for the renewable energy industry,
Speaker 6: as you can imagine.
Speaker 5: I mean, they essentially said it would kill them and
Speaker 5: they wouldn't grow nearly as well as as they did.
Speaker 5: And it's been an interesting political response to an industry
Speaker 5: that you know, contributed uh megawatts. We didn't have outages
Speaker 5: last summer because our storage and generating capacity, you know,
Speaker 5: the amount of energy we were able to harbor was
Speaker 5: was more and it helped make the grid reliable. But
Speaker 5: of course the politics of a Republican state play into that.
Speaker 5: You know, we're really resentful of the federal subsidies that
Speaker 5: renewable has gone at the at the federal level, even
Speaker 5: though Texas hasn't you know, given a single set to
Speaker 5: renewable energy. But but there was anyway, the response to
Speaker 5: to renewables in the session was what you would expect, uh,
Speaker 5: In large part because of the politics, but also because lawmakers.
Speaker 6: Are you okay on.
Speaker 2: Are you ironically like the lights have gone off in here?
Speaker 6: Lights are off?
Speaker 4: Which I asked Rob to do that after you were
Speaker 4: making funny No, I didn't, but I wish I had.
Speaker 8: We talk about energy.
Speaker 2: That's so funny, crazy timing.
Speaker 1: There, all right, for those not watching at home or
Speaker 1: those not watching on YouTube. Also lights went off for
Speaker 1: a minute, they came back.
Speaker 3: Look, you know we've we've all worked a lot these
Speaker 3: last few days, were retired.
Speaker 6: You know, it's lights out for all of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and that's yeah, that's a sign.
Speaker 5: But then what I was going to add is that,
Speaker 5: you know, for lawmakers, it was also there was also
Speaker 5: a sense of uh, strengthening what they call dispatchable, which
Speaker 5: is just the traditional forms of energy, so think natural gas, coal,
Speaker 5: and now battery storage. It's kind of in that definition
Speaker 5: as well. You know, they wanted to make sure the
Speaker 5: grid could rely just as much on those energy sources
Speaker 5: as much as as wind and solar. But they but
Speaker 5: in doing so, they kind of singled out renewable energy
Speaker 5: and tried to force them out of the definition of dispatchable,
Speaker 5: which you know, in one bill, they would have been
Speaker 5: punished if they couldn't come up with natural gas plants
Speaker 5: as backups to the wind and solar farms. And in
Speaker 5: another bill, if the grid wasn't needing fifty percent of
Speaker 5: its energy source from dispatchable energy, the renewable companies would
Speaker 5: have to pay a credit to kind of make sure
Speaker 5: the economics of that were evened out. But yeah, I
Speaker 5: mean it comes down to the politics of this. We
Speaker 5: like certain sources of energy. We are a proud oil
Speaker 5: and gas state that also just happens to have a
Speaker 5: really strong renewable energy industry, and it's you know, who
Speaker 5: do we favor and how do we go about that?
Speaker 5: And does everybody have a place in the open market.
Speaker 5: I think in the policy it kind of says it, right, No,
Speaker 5: they don't. It's the sources that we would prefer that
Speaker 5: make us more comfortable for the grid's reliability.
Speaker 2: I think not, unlike water, going to continue to be.
Speaker 1: Like a major political issue going forward for future sessions.
Speaker 1: Sounds like, you know, some a lot of movement this session,
Speaker 1: but nothing really permanently resolved in any way that will
Speaker 1: you know, allow lawmakers to stop talking about the grid
Speaker 1: as much as I'm sure some of them probably want to.
Speaker 2: Well, let's leave it there. That's it for today.
Speaker 1: You can find all episodes of the Tribecast on YouTube
Speaker 1: or wherever you find your podcasts. Be sure to like, subscribe,
Speaker 1: and share the podcast on all of your platforms. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to get in touch with the team, you
Speaker 1: can reach us at Tribecast at Texastribune dot org. Thank
Speaker 1: you to our sponsors City of Corpus Christi, Texas Realtors
Speaker 1: and Water Grows. Thank you so much to Alejandra and
Speaker 1: Carlos for joining us, and if once again, if you
Speaker 1: haven't already, check out their series on Water and Carlos
Speaker 1: is really great coverage of the the fights over you know,
Speaker 1: the grid reliability during the session. Our producers are Rob
Speaker 1: Avila and Chris Spovida. Our theme music is composed by
Speaker 1: Rob and we will see you next week.