Energy Security is Economic Security and Texas is Behind the 8-Ball
Guest Author: Sanjay Narayan
Energy security is economic security. Rep. Morgan Meyer, as the current Texas State Representative for District 108, has attempted to position himself as a ‘pragmatic’ Republican, but his voting record on economic and energy issues reveals a troubling pattern of support for policies that undermine Texas’s energy future and prosperity.
For example, he authored HB4242 (2021) which would have extended Chapter 313 tax abatements for wind and solar projects in our state. It was only because Lt. Gov. Patrick blocked the legislation from being considered in the Senate that it failed to become law. Similarly, Rep. Meyer voted no on SB 258 (2021), which would have limited wind and solar projects near military bases. These votes reveal that Rep. Meyer prioritizes so-called green energy expansion over economic growth and grid security and stability. During Winter Storm Uri of 2021, wind and solar faltered, contributing to widespread outages, while natural gas and nuclear power carried the grid. Yet Rep. Meyer’s consistent support for bloated subsidies have delayed reorienting the Texas grid towards reliable power to sustain our future.
Rep. Meyer also has no record of publicly advocating for nuclear energy — a carbon-free, reliable baseload power source — further exposing his misalignment with Texas’s energy needs. Nuclear power boasts a 92 percent capacity factor, dwarfing wind (35 percent) and solar (25 percent), yet Meyer has not championed bills to expand it, unlike peers pushing small modular reactors (SMRs) or federal credits for their development. Texas, with only two nuclear plants (Comanche Peak and South Texas Project), lags behind states leveraging nuclear for grid resilience. Instead, while Rep. Meyer has been in office, Texas has become the largest producer of wind energy in the country, solar is projected to become over 10 percent of our grid by the end of this decade, and over 80 percent of scheduled power projects in the coming decade in Texas will be wind and solar, all to our collective detriment.
Finally, Rep. Meyer’s inconsistent support for natural gas — the backbone of Texas’s grid — casts doubt on his commitment to cheap, reliable, energy security. While he later backed HB 5 to bolster dispatchable power, his earlier push to extend Chapter 313 via HB 4242 in 2021 would have prolonged tax breaks that disproportionately favored wind and solar over gas. Natural gas powers over 40 percent of Texas’s electricity and can ramp up when renewables inevitably fail. Rep. Meyer’s failure to aggressively defend gas against renewable encroachment leaves the state vulnerable to repeats of past crises. By supporting wind and solar credits at the expense of equally robust support for nuclear or natural gas, Rep. Meyer’s policies flirt with an unreliable energy mix, risking Texas’s economic and physical well-being for a flawed green agenda. It’s time he refocuses on what keeps the lights on.
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