The race to a green future in the Lone Star State is definitely not a sprint but a marathon. Although data reported by the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas
(ERCOT) in July revealed that wind had actually out -generated coal in Texas for the year to that point, the graph below, which ERCOT posted last month, shows that
the fossil fuel has since regained its 1% lead.
Despite this setback, the winds of change continue to blow through Texas. In a report released on September 19, Rystad Energy projects that 2020 is sure to be
the first full year when the state ’s wind turbines produce more power than its coal plants. Next year, Texas wind farms are expected to generate 87 terawatt -hours
(TWh) of electricity, enough energy to power almost 8 million homes (at an average of 10,000 kWh per year per home) by themselves. Coal -fired plants, meanwhile, are
expected to generate almost 3 TWh less electricity in Texas than wind next year.
For the record, both wind and coal still trail combined -cycle natural gas generators, whose own share of the state’s fuel mix has grown from 38% in July to 40% in September, according to the September graph from ERCOT. However, the future for Texas wind power looks only brighter.
Texas remains by far the biggest producer of wind energy in the U.S. (followed by Iowa, Oklahoma, and California), and its capacity is actually growing. As Meredith
Lawrence reported in Dallas Observer on August 5, “If all of the wind capacity currently under review were to be approved and put into operation, Texas would have
more than double its current wind energy capacity. Conversely, there are no new coal projects in the queue. ”
Under President Donald Trump, who has affirmatively attempted to revitalize the coal industry while adopting, at best, an arguably ambivalent stance toward renewables, politics and the government support that it can (or cannot) produce remain a potential obstacle to the realization of the full potential of wind power, especially as phase-out of the tax credit for renewable energy production could begin next year. Fortunately, the economics are starting to pan out and step in.
The Rystad report maintains that, even with the loss of subsidies, wind will be competitive, at least in the Midwest and South Central U.S. markets, such as Texas. The
report also notes the increasing comparability of the cost of wind generation with that of coal. These developments must be encouraging to Texas consumers, who
surely welcome any solutions that can keep the cost of electricity steady in their state, especially during summers like the one just recorded, which yielded real -
time prices as high as $9,000/MWh in August.