Texas Republicans Plan To Cut Renewable Energy And Give Free Cash To Natural Gas

Republicans in Texas are not only ignoring the massive power grid failures and energy troubles that they are facing - they have proposed legislation that would actually make the problems worse. One bill working its way through the statehouse would make renewable energy more expensive for both consumers and the state, while another would create a bank of public money available to fossil fuel producers so they always have free cash available to them. These moves are absolutely insane, but that's apparently the route Texas chooses to go, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The state of Texas has decided that they aren't gonna do anything really about the failing energy grid that currently runs their state and has failed multiple times, just this past winter, as well as failing once or twice over the summer. And then of course, there was the big power grid failure that left, uh, dozens of people dead when Texas had that deep freeze. And Ted Cruz headed off to Cancun. But late last week, republicans who control the state of Texas introduced a slate of new legislation that not only will penalize solar and wind energy in the state, like make them have to pay more money into a special account, you know, thereby making renewable energy more expensive for consumers and producers in the state of Texas. But they also have decided with this new legislation to create a special fund from which the dirty energy industry, gas and coal and oil, y'all can just pull free money out of this fund.

And we're also gonna give you millions more in subsidies. So we're just giving you free cash, you know, so that you might be able to make some more power plants in our state, uh, in the future if, if you so choose to do, here's a pot of free money for you to do that. Oh, and also we're gonna change the definition of what renewable energy means, and we're gonna classify natural gas methane as renewable energy, clean energy in the state of, uh, Texas. So yeah, we're hurting actual renewable energy and we are giving free money to the fossil fuel industry. That is the response from the Republicans in Texas. After the fossil fuel industry sent, uh, uh, uh, dozens of people to their graves, you sent people to an early grave because you got everything you wanted. And you don't have to be held accountable to anyone. God knows those Republicans in Texas are not going to hold you accountable, but now you get free money because of it.

Every day I come into, come into the studio here, I do videos, I talk about things, and every day I think there's no way things are gonna get weirder and dumber than what they already are. And every day I end up surprising myself with how stupid things are getting in this country, Texas has an energy grid that is on life support, and they have it that way because of the deregulation in the state, because they are not holding the fossil fuel companies accountable. So the next time Texas gets an extreme weather event, whether it's a deep freeze or a massive heat wave, the power grid will fail and people could die. But instead of

Actually doing anything about that, instead of improving the energy delivery infrastructure, which is what the problem is, they're like, Hey, why don't we give you free money to go build another power plant because that'll probably fix these, uh, blackouts we have. Actually, it won't, because if you can't modernize the delivery system, then all of that energy produced at that new plant means nothing. It has nowhere to go because it's not the power plants that are your massive problem. It's the infrastructure itself, the delivery system, the grid. The grid, you idiots. That is what is failing, and you're still refusing to address that. And of course, as the energy grid fails, you have more and more residents, more businesses saying, well, maybe we oughta put some solar panels up. Maybe we oughta tap into the, the wind energy.