Travel anywhere in Texas today and you’ll hear the same concerns: the cost of living is rising, and families are struggling to keep up. Among the biggest drivers of that frustration are energy costs and affordability.
Texans have every right to be angry.
We live atop some of the most abundant energy resources in the world. No state is better positioned to provide reliable, affordable power to its citizens. Yet instead of embracing the resources that made Texas prosperous, powerful special interests are pushing costly ESG-driven policies that threaten to make energy more expensive while delivering little benefit to the people who pay the bills.
The latest example is the Strategic Transmission Expansion Plan, or STEP.
Governor Abbott and the Texas Legislature directed the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT to address growing energy demand in the Permian Basin. The objective was straightforward: increase generation capacity, improve reliability, and keep energy affordable.
What Texans got instead was a massive transmission project that appears designed to satisfy corporate ESG goals rather than meet the state’s actual energy needs with reliable and dispatchable power.
Under STEP, regulators are pursuing construction of 765-kilovolt transmission lines stretching across Texas to move electricity generated from intermittent and unreliable sources to the Permian Basin. According to an analysis by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the lifetime cost Texans have to shell out for the project could approach $100 billion.
$100 billion to move unreliable power that isn’t even produced if the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. For that price tag, Texans should expect transformative results.
Instead, the analysis suggests the project will provide only modest increases in generation while potentially increasing costs for consumers. Even more troubling, the project ignores the obvious solution sitting directly beneath the feet of West Texans: abundant natural gas reserves capable of powering new generation at a fraction of the cost.
If the goal is reliable and affordable electricity, Texas already has the resources.
So why spend $100 billion building transmission lines across the state?
Why seize thousands of acres of private property through eminent domain?
Why force landowners to surrender their land for infrastructure many experts believe is unnecessary?
The answer is Left-wing politicization of energy and its becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Large corporations and their allies in government are under enormous pressure to satisfy ESG mandates, pursue net-zero targets, and capture federal subsidies. The interests of ordinary Texans are becoming secondary to “corporate sustainability” reports and political agendas.
Midland-area State Senator Kevin Sparks is a champion for Texas energy. He’s sounded the alarm on this project, and he deserves credit for doing so. He isn’t alone, talking to producers, consumers, and other people of West Texas reveals they understand what is happening. They know that affordable energy is essential to economic prosperity. They also know that ideological energy policy comes with a cost.
Texas became an economic powerhouse because we embraced common sense, free enterprise, and abundant domestic energy. The Texas Miracle wasn’t built by environmentalist wackos, Left-wing activists, or bureaucrats chasing the latest corporate trend. It was built by hardworking Texans who understood that affordable and reliable energy is the foundation of prosperity.
That legacy is worth defending.
Texans deserve regulators who put the public interest ahead of ESG scorecards. They deserve energy policies focused on affordability, reliability, and economic growth. Most importantly, they deserve leaders willing to stand up to Left-aligned corporate interests when those interests conflict with the goals of Texas families.
Donald Trump has heroically opposed the Green New Scam in Washington, it’s up to us to oppose similar projects in Texas.
The choice before us is simple: continue down the path of expensive ideological projects, or return to the principles that made Texas the economic engine of the West and the energy capital of the world.
For the sake of Texas consumers, taxpayers, and landowners, we should choose Texans first.
