Charting Texas’ road to becoming a renewable energy powerhouse

Senior Global Correspondent

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<header><h1>Charting Texas’ road to becoming a renewable energy powerhouse</h1><a href="" rel="author"></a><span class="title"></span><time rel="pubdate" datetime="2024-08-21T00:00:00-04:00">Aug 21</time></header><p>I first visited the Texas oil patch back in 2016 on assignment for The Wall Street Journal. As I passed through West Texas on my way to the fossil-fuel rich Permian Basin, I couldn’t help noticing something surprising: wind turbines everywhere.</p><p>I had stumbled onto the state’s clean little secret: a renewable energy boom, which, it turns out, was only just getting started. Already back then, wind energy had established itself as a growing pillar of the state’s power system, thanks to a private-public partnership driven by Republican oil tycoons, then-Governor George W. Bush and the now-deceased investor T. Boone Pickens.</p><p>I wrote about all this in a <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/which-state-is-a-big-renewable-energy-pioneer-texas-1472414098?st=af3b17ticnm3w00&amp;reflink=article_copyURL_share" target="_blank" rel="noopener">front-page</a> story in the Journal back then, noting that the impressive wind bonanza was about to be outdone by a surge in solar power.</p><p>That push is well under way now, as you can see in the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joshua-rhodes-phd-2502b82b_updated-through-q2-2024-ercot-fuel-mix-activity-7221932724943511553-YURK/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">data</a> above from the Texas power authority, Electric Reliability Council of Texas, more commonly referred to as ERCOT.</p><p>Texas may be enamored with oil and gas, but its copious amounts of land and comparatively fewer permitting rules also make the Lone Star state better than nearly any other in the Union at utilizing renewable energy and batteries.</p><p>The chart shows not only the dramatic role wind power now plays — accounting for well over a quarter of generation in the first half of this year — but also the stunning rate of solar expansion. It has taken solar only about half the time wind needed to double from a 5% to a 10% share of the state’s power generation, and solar has done this in a system that is now much larger overall than it was two decades ago.</p><p>Not pictured, but critical to solar’s rise and its bright future, is ERCOT’s growing use of battery storage to help temper the variability of solar generation. Texas could <a href="https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/how-texas-became-the-hottest-battery-market-in-the-country-energy-storage" target="_blank" rel="noopener">add more</a> battery capacity than even renewable-energy darling California this year and could pass California in total battery capacity as soon as <a href="https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/texas-will-add-more-grid-batteries-than-any-other-state-in-2024" target="_blank" rel="noopener">next year</a>.</p>
Charting Texas’ road to becoming a renewable energy powerhouse

by  - 

August 21, 2024


I first visited the Texas oil patch back in 2016 on assignment for The Wall Street Journal. As I passed through West Texas on my way to the fossil-fuel rich Permian Basin, I couldn’t help noticing something surprising: wind turbines everywhere.
I had stumbled onto the state’s clean little secret: a renewable energy boom, which, it turns out, was only just getting started. Already back then, wind energy had established itself as a growing pillar of the state’s power system, thanks to a private-public partnership driven by Republican oil tycoons, then-Governor George W. Bush and the now-deceased investor T. Boone Pickens.
I wrote about all this in a front-page story in the Journal back then, noting that the impressive wind bonanza was about to be outdone by a surge in solar power.
That push is well under way now, as you can see in the data above from the Texas power authority, Electric Reliability Council of Texas, more commonly referred to as ERCOT.
Texas may be enamored with oil and gas, but its copious amounts of land and comparatively fewer permitting rules also make the Lone Star state better than nearly any other in the Union at utilizing renewable energy and batteries.
The chart shows not only the dramatic role wind power now plays — accounting for well over a quarter of generation in the first half of this year — but also the stunning rate of solar expansion. It has taken solar only about half the time wind needed to double from a 5% to a 10% share of the state’s power generation, and solar has done this in a system that is now much larger overall than it was two decades ago.
Not pictured, but critical to solar’s rise and its bright future, is ERCOT’s growing use of battery storage to help temper the variability of solar generation. Texas could add more battery capacity than even renewable-energy darling California this year and could pass California in total battery capacity as soon as next year.