Testimony Before the Texas Senate Committee on Business and Commerce on Senate Bill 715 Regarding Generation Reliability Requirements
Heartland Impact
April 1, 2025
Chairman Schwertner and Members of the Committee:
Thank you for holding a hearing on Senate Bill 715, legislation relating to the applicability of generation reliability requirements.
My name is Samantha Vick, and I am the Senior Manager for State Government Relations at Heartland Impact. Heartland Impact is the advocacy and outreach arm of The Heartland Institute. Both are independent, national, nonprofit organizations working to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Heartland Impact specializes in providing state lawmakers the policy and advocacy resources to advance free-market policies towards broad-based economic prosperity.
SB 715 is legislation that is crucial to safeguarding Texas’s energy generation reliability, in turn, ensuring affordable and reliable energy for all Texans in an era when much of the country is subject to blackouts and brownouts from pushing an eager-to-Green agenda.
Reliable and affordable energy is essential to our quality of life and the absence of it has the potential to endanger human health and welfare. Electricity demand is growing, yet the availability of reliable, on-demand electricity capacity is not. Energy experts warn that rolling brownouts and blackouts are already an imminent threat, and the strain is only getting worse. Indeed, in August 2023, Texas hit all-time peak energy demand recorded on the Texas grid.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, electricity demand is expected to grow by 15 percent in the next five years. This rapid growth is expected primarily due to the growth of data centers and the power demands of artificial intelligence. Ensuring energy generation reliability and overall energy grid reliability will only solidify Texas’s energy security.
Energy prices in Texas have increased 20 percent over the last five years according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Texas ranks third in the nation for the average electricity bill, only led by Hawaii and Connecticut in costs based on the average electricity bill as of December 2024.
The weight of focusing on energy generation reliability – as this bill does – is highlighted even further with much of the nation turning away from reliable sources of energy generation with the retirement of previously existing baseload and dispatchable energy plants in favor of solar and wind for energy production.
Proponents of green energy initiatives claim that solutions such as new solar and wind power projects can and will fill the demand gap by turning away from oil, natural gas, and coal. However, they are dangerously mistaken. Even in sunny Texas, solar power facilities provide power at 24.6 percent of solar PV capacity factors—less than 25 percent of their rated capacity according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
This means that most of the time, baseload sources of energy such as oil, natural gas, nuclear, and coal power plants will be required to keep the lights on, the air conditioners running, and critical infrastructure functioning. After all, with the absence of the sun at night, when clouds obscure the sun, or when the wind isn’t blowing, we need to fill in where the energy comes from when Texas consumers flip their light switch.
Ultimately, safeguarding energy generation reliability to ensure affordable and reliable energy gives Texas a substantial competitive advantage in a world where energy is becoming less and less secure. The paramount goals for energy production should be affordably and reliability for all Texans. The downstream effects of SB 715 would absolutely aid Texas in accomplishing and maintaining those energy goals.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
