Opponents of new ultra-high-voltage transmission lines voiced their concerns into the wee hours of the morning at a 15-hour-long state capitol hearing on Wednesday and Thursday. Speakers shared their fear over the project's local impacts, their anger over the proliferation of data centers and their distrust of renewable energy.
State regulators and grid managers say that new electric transmission is necessary to maintain Texas grid reliability. But the long night of protest laid bare the challenges ahead for major additions to the energy system.
Here are some key takeaways.
Grid operators say the state needs new transmission to avoid blackouts
The 765 kilovolt transmission lines would be constructed in phases to move more electricity, more efficiently, around fast-growing Texas.
The first phase of that larger transmission network, the routing of which is already underway, is called the Permian Basin Reliability Plan.
That would create three 765 kilovolt ultra-high-voltage transmission lines running from the central part of the state to West Texas to answer energy shortages due largely to high demand from the oil and gas industry.
The lines are bigger and taller than any currently in Texas, reaching a height of 160 feet and occupying a right of way 200 feet wide.
At the hearing, state electric utility regulators said they approved the plan for ultra-high-voltage lines because building a few big lines leaves a smaller footprint than building several lower voltage lines to carry the same amount of electricity.
"765 is fewer lines," Thomas Gleason, Executive Director of the Public Utility Commission of Texas told lawmakers. "While each line requires more right of way, in totality, it's actually less right of way."
Both Gleason and officials from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas told lawmakers that not building more transmission is simply not an option.
"The amount of power that would have to flow [through existing lines] would damage the existing infrastructure," said ERCOT Chief Operating Officer Woody Rickerson.
"And how long down the line would it be before you started getting worried about rolling blackouts [in the Permian Basin]?" asked State Senator Kevin Sparks.
"We think next year is a possibility," said Rickerson.
Rural landowners say they are bearing the burden for others' energy use.
Over 200 people attended the hearing to testify about grid issues and the transmission projects, which the vast majority of speakers opposed.
Rural landowners whose communities lie along the proposed routes say the projects would damage local landscapes and economies.
"We have the Nueces River that goes through [our ranch] for four miles and we're concerned about what the watershed will be like when this two hundred foot swath is cut through the property," said Jeannie Dullnig, whose Texas Hill Country Ranch would be crossed by the Howard-Solstice line, the southernmost of the three transmission projects in the plan.
Many opponents described the lines as "big extension cords" that would cut through their communities, or take energy from their areas, while offering no local benefit.
"I don't understand why we need to move our power that is local to Erath County and those counties that are close proximity to Comanche Peak Power Plant, to West Texas or to East Texas," said Emily Martin Howe, whose land in Erath County would be impacted by the Dinosaur to Longshore segment of the northernmost transmission line.
Martin Howe and others said power generation should be located closer to where energy is consumed.
The fight is about more than just transmission lines
While many people who live near the proposed transmission routes oppose them because of the local impact, others have taken up the fight for other reasons.
An improved transmission system would allow for more wind and solar power to flow throughout the state. That's a benefit according to public health officials, climate scientists and many power grid operators.
But opponents of the state's renewable energy boom do not like it.
"If we charge through with these lines right now, it's almost guaranteed that what we'll fill these up with is more wind, mostly solar," said State Senator Sparks.
Sparks, and others, argued that power from renewable sources and energy storage batteries is less reliable than power from natural gas generators.
He was one of nine state senators and 34 state lawmakers who co-signed an amicus brief urging a pause to the transmission projects.
That brief was written by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a powerful conservative think tank that opposes the state's renewable energy boom and has supported landowner opposition to wind and solar projects.
Many speakers at Wednesday's hearing also warned that improved electric transmission will allow for more data center development in rural areas.
The controversy has some lawmakers bashing Texas oil and gas and questioning the idea of a power grid
The power lines proposed under the Permian Basin Reliability plan will feed electricity to West Texas's energy-hungry oil and gas industry.
That has opponents of the plan asking why the industry, which produces more natural gas than it can sell, can't power itself by building gas power plants in its own region.
It has also brought about something you rarely hear in the state capitol: criticism of oil and gas from Republican state lawmakers, who typically cheerlead the industry.
"It just seems like it's just a rich daddy that doesn't want to pay for developing transmission lines," said State Senator Donna Campbell. "They've got the oil and gas, they get revenue from it, if anybody can generate power, they should be able to."
At times, speakers and lawmakers came close to questioning the logic of a shared power grid, which increases electric reliability and lowers cost by allowing energy to travel vast distances from where it is generated to where it is consumed.
"We're going to spend billions to take power from another part of the state, cross everybody's ranch, to give them transmission. Get them electricity," said Sen. Campbell, "is that right?"
"I just wish we could say, you need it, you've got the dollars and you do it," she added.
"There is a universal benefit of a public utility, whether it's water or electricity," cautioned Committee Chair Charles Shwertner in response. "If not, then every family gets to be responsible for their electricity and their water taken to the most micro extreme."
Under current rules, the Public Utility Commission of Texas has until the end of August to approve routing for the first part of the new transmission plan, the southern Howard-Solstice line.
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