State comptroller criticizes wind power subsidies

Reflecting a wider discomfort among some top state officials on renewable power, the state’s chief financial officer says the state should rethink its support for wind energy.

Comptroller Susan Combs said that it was “time for wind to stand on its own two feet” as she released a report Tuesday encouraging lawmakers to discontinue subsidies for electricity generation.

While the subsidies, chiefly in the form of federal tax credits as well as school property tax exemptions, have helped make Texas the national leader in wind power, Combs’ report, “Texas Power Challenge: Getting the Most From Your Energy Dollars,” argues that the energy source falls well short in the summer months when Texans use the most power.

Combs released the report as world leaders are meeting at the United Nations to marshal support for the cutting of carbon emissions, which scientists have linked to global warming and which are commonly associated with such nonrenewable sources of electricity as coal and gas-fired power plants.

Environmentalists criticized the report, saying it took a blinkered approach to energy policy.

It understates the subsidies given to natural gas, nuclear and coal plants, said Tom Smith, head of the Austin office of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, and “ignores totally the costs of hidden environmental damages caused by these types of plants – such as the wastes from coal mining, fracking or nuclear power generation.”

Russel Smith, head of the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association, said he had no comment on the Combs report, but in June he told the Statesman that rolling back support for wind power “ignores the obvious — that all energy sources have and continue to receive governmental support.”

But Combs’ attack on wind power echoes a change among some top Republican policymakers. It was GOP Gov. George W. Bush who gave the wind industry a leg up when he signed a law in 1999 mandating that utilities get a portion of their energy from renewable sources. (A federal wind tax credit predates the law signed by Bush.)

Only a few years ago, the state Public Utility Commission mapped the routes for $6.9 billion in transmission lines, paid for by the state’s ratepayers, to deliver wind energy from West Texas and the Panhandle to cities in the central part of the state.

But in June, Donna Nelson, the commission’s chairwoman, said she doesn’t want to add to the “subsidization” of the wind industry.

Behind the shift in attitude on wind lurks an old-fashioned energy turf war as industries compete to provide electricity to Texas’ growing appetite.

In 2007, natural gas was responsible for 45.5 percent of energy generated in Texas; wind clocked in with 2.9 percent. By 2013, natural gas had dropped to 40.5 percent and wind jumped to 9.9 percent.

The issue of renewable energy could be a tricky one for Republicans seeking higher office.

In his campaign for state attorney general this year, Barry Smitherman largely steered clear of discussing his role as the former PUC chairman who had overseen the adoption of transmission line maps. (He lost in the Republican primary.)

And it presents a special pitfall for Gov. Rick Perry: On the one hand, he could point to the state’s wind power success in a general election for president — about 100,000 people across the state work in the renewable energy sector; on the other, he could be weighed down in the Republican primary by his support for the huge investment in the transmission infrastructure, which will be paid by millions of Texans with increases of $5 to $10 a month on their electric bills.

In June, state Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, who authored the 2005 legislation that led to the transmission line system, acknowledged the changing tide. “If (the transmission line system) came up today, it wouldn’t be as easy” to pass, he said.