Anti-renewables bills die in Texas House, but may reemerge in 2027

• The Texas Legislature wrapped up its 2025 session on Monday without approving three energy bills that advocates said would have made it harder to build and operate renewable power plants in the state.
• The measures would have imposed “firming” requirements on new and existing renewables installations, required new wind and solar installations to pair with an equal amount of non-battery dispatchable capacity and singled out renewables for additional permitting.
• All three bills passed the Texas Senate but did not advance to a final vote in the state House of Representatives. Other energy-related measures did pass the full legislature, including a requirement that the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department review proposed offshore wind projects, a $350 million nuclear development fund and billions in appropriations for dispatchable generation via the Texas Energy Fund.

The demise of the three Republican-sponsored anti-renewables bills averts a scenario that a broad coalition of Texas stakeholders said could have dramatically reduced investment in the state’s rapidly-growing power system.

Mirroring language used in a thus-far fruitless attempt to preserve federal clean energy tax credits in the Congressional GOP budget bill, renewables advocates appealed to Texas Republicans’ pro-energy sensibilities in calls to oppose the three bills.

“With energy demand rising fast, Texas needs every megawatt it can generate to keep the lights on and our economy strong. We cannot afford to turn away from the pro-energy and pro-business policies that made the Lone Star State the energy capital,” the Solar Energy Industries Association said in April after S.B. 819, the renewables permitting bill, passed the state Senate.

Texas power developers, operators and some large-load customers were especially concerned about S.B. 715, which would have imposed retroactive “firming” requirements on wind and solar resources. By raising costs not only for planned resources but for operating power plants, the bill would have increased power prices, raised blackout risks and caused a “wave of generation retirements,” Stoic Energy principal Doug Lewin said earlier this year.

Current Texas law requires new renewable generators to build or contract for firm generation capacity beginning in 2027. Advocates say that will blunt key price signals in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas energy market and reduce revenue opportunities for thermal generators. But the net effect on renewables development will likely be marginal, said Olivier Beaufils, head of US Central at Aurora Energy Research.

Complying with S.B. 715 would have been “much harder and much more expensive,” whereas the rule coming in 2027 “is something most developers can manage and should not be overburdening for those projects,” particularly if the Public Utilities Commission of Texas takes a light-touch approach to implementation, Beaufils said.

Still, Beaufils said the fact that the anti-renewables bills got as far as they did was a wake-up call to the Texas energy community.

“The industry was not expecting some of these bills to move as much as they moved,” he said.

The tide began turning in April, after the bills cleared key Senate votes and a broad opposition coalition was organized. The Texas Oil and Gas Association, whose members are rapidly electrifying upstream operations, publicly whipped against the House version of S.B. 715 alongside clean energy and environmental advocates.

“You had groups with a lot more pull in the legislature who made some calls to the right people to say, ‘these bills are not good for us,’” Beaufils said.

While the anti-renewables bills’ failure is temporary good news for the Texas power sector, Beaufils said similar measures could emerge when the state legislature convenes again in January 2027.

What form they take and how much support they garner depends on what happens in the meantime.

If developers can move forward on some gas-fired power plant projects in queue for support from the now fully-funded Texas Energy Fund, or reliability concerns fade from public view, legislators may feel less urgency to stack the deck against renewables, Beaufils said.

“[But] it’s almost for sure that some of these bills will be revived next session, just like some were refiled this year after failing to pass in 2023,” he said.