Renewable electricity Texas style

Tilting at windmills: Ken Lay, green electricity and your utility bill

You can make your electric company contribute to the wind power movement.
Enron left one unexpected eco benefit in its wake.

Long after Ken Lay steered what I like to picture as a Bayliner yacht filled with Somali pirates through the brackish waters of Texas politics, Enron left the state with at least one unexpected benefit in its wake.

The eco-conscious electric customer can now put his money where his mouth is. After Enron’s patrons pushed deregulation through the Legislature, a subsequent measure created targets for renewable energy use and gave people the chance to purchase some or all of their electricity from renewable sources.

Originally, the bill set a target of generating 2,880 megawatts from sustainable sources by 2009. When highly subsidized wind farmers met that goal three years early, legislators bumped the target up to 10,000 megawatts by 2025, equal to about 14 percent of all the electricity currently generated in the state.

Should you chip in part of your household budget to help meet that goal? Maybe. Here are a few points to consider:

Price:Electric plans marketed as 100 percent renewable energy in my zip code average 11.5 cents per kilowatt hour, about 6.5 percent more than the average cost of other plans. (Keep in mind, your federal taxes already subsidize a 2.1 cents per kwh tax break for renewable power companies).

It won’t improve the air you actually breathe: In our state, 90 percent of renewable power comes from wind farms scattered across the lonesome expanses of central and west Texas. A renewable energy plan simply obliges your utility to pay a wind farm operator to put the same amount of power you use into the state’s grid. The electrons that actually open your garage door in Houston probably come from one of the area’s many natural gas power plants, regardless of your electric plan.

Put another way, an electricity provider in a deregulated market is about as likely to generate the power it sells as a commodities trader is to show up at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange pushing a wheelbarrow full of soybeans.

The renewable option does promote renewable energy in the state:For the moment at least, Texas is the only state that operates an electric grid free from federal regulation or any significant connections to the rest of the country. Money spent on renewable energy in Texas stays in Texas.

The state generates more electricity from wind than any other, and it could lead the way in developing technology that will make wind energy an economically viable power source in the future. Whether you want to help bankroll that development with a higher utility bill is up to you.

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Thanks, Queen Bey

Pop icon Beyoncé donates $100,000 to University of Houston Law School

Photo by Erza Shaw Getty Images

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Pop megastar Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has donated $100,000 to the University of Houston Law Center Criminal Justice Clinic through her BeyGOOD Foundation. The gift will allow the clinic to hire fill-time faculty to head it, benefiting the students who study there.

“I am delighted that the BeyGOOD Foundation has made this very generous gift to the UH Law Center,” said Leonard Baynes, dean of the UH Law Center. “Not only will this funding help establish a full-time criminal justice clinic that provides pro bono legal services in our community, but it will also supercharge our already excellent criminal law and justice programming.”

The clinic is one of nine at UHLC. It helps students learn to navigate the criminal justice system, especially on behalf of clients that are underserved by skilled attorneys. People of color are affected disproportionately by a lack of good, ethical representation.

Beyoncé, the most decorated artist in Grammy history and easily the biggest musical star native to Houston, has a long history of advocating for criminal justice reform. She was a staunch supporter of the police reform following the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, asking law enforcement to “stop killing us” in a web post. In 2020, she penned an open letter to the Kentucky attorney general asking for justice in the death of Breonna Taylor.

Through her BeyGOOD Foundation, established in 2013, Beyoncé has focused mostly on expanding the prospects of Black-owned business and offering education opportunities to students. Forwarding the cause of legal representation in Texas while also helping out marginalized communities compliments her other philanthropic work.

“At UH Law, we envision a legal profession where ‘everyone has the opportunity to prosper,’ as BeyGOOD envisions, and we will achieve this vision by providing access to strong and effective legal representation in criminal proceedings,” Baynes said. “And together, through this gift, the BeyGOOD Foundation and UHLC will shepherd the next generation of criminal justice attorneys in the city of Houston, the state of Texas and the nation.”