Hello Folks,

The 81st Regular Session of the Texas State Legislature ended last week. Once again, it ended pretty much in disarray.

What follows is my post-mortem on the clean energy issues I've been following in this newsletter.

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Best regards
Bob Fusinato
[Send questions, comments, or suggestions to BobFusinato@tx.rr.com]

"Disappointing session" says one environmentalist. I agree - especially since members of both parties showed unprecedented support for developing more renewable energy and energy efficiency. Major renewables bills like the non-wind RPS and distributed solar incentives bill passed the House or Senate but not both. The net metering law passed both but could not be reconciled in the House. Likewise bills to update statewide building codes and appliance efficiency standards fell by the wayside.

Ultimately politics trumped progress on a clean renewable energy future for Texas. "The bottom line", says the Alliance for Clean Texas, "we didn't make the kind of progress on clean energy and clean air issues we had hoped to make." Two reasons they say was strong industry opposition and a session that fell behind from the beginning and ended in partisan stalemate. Yet another disfunctional session!

Still all was not lost. A few bills which have some environmental benefit (shown below) are on the way to the Governor's desk. And, some environmental groups see a clean energy groundwork laid for next session. There's some hope in the fact that bipartisan agreement could be reached on major legislation that got as far as it did.

I believe, we are at the cusp of a "green energy" revolution that will allow us to move away from polluting technologies and transition to new technologies that will ultimately cost less than cleaning up the old ones. I'll admit it is probably necessary to do some of both. But, unfortunately, Texas politicians seem to want to concentrate on short term solutions to clean up old technology. Unfortunately Texans do not appear ready to take the lead in developing inherently clean-renewable technology.

In a press release issued June 4th, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity says, "This was a banner session for clean coal technologies and Texas lawmakers have positioned Texas as ground zero for advanced clean coal projects..."

Yep that's Texas for you!

CLEAN ENERGY SOURCES
  none
INCENTIVES FOR CLEAN ENERGY
  ****  HB 432  Green fleets, promote low emission & plug-in hybrid vehicles
         for state agencies
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
    **** HB 1937 Estab. local tax districts for renewable power and energy efficiency loans
GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE
 Mass Transit & Intermodal Transportation
   **** SB 581  
 State-wide Passenger Rail
   **** SB 1382 
GREEN TECH R&D
    none
GREEN COLLAR TRAINING & EDUCATION
    none    
OMNIBUS ENERGY BILL FOR CLEAN AIR
    **   SB 16 (->House lapsed 5/26, -> HB 1796 as ammendment 5/28)
   **** HB 1796 Relating to offshore CO2 storage. Passed conf cmte w part of SB 16 that extends

              TERP grants for developing Carbon Capture & Sequestration. (Less desirable portion of bill)

GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS 
   **** SB 184 No-regrets strategy for GHG emission reduction.
    **** HB 469 More tax breaks and givaways to carbon intensive industries for carbon capture and

              sequestration including enhanced oil recovery from CO2.