How Texas became America’s biggest producer of wind energy | with Speed & Scale

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2:10Hey, Anjali. Hi, Ryan. Do you remember when Texas had that really bad storm a few years ago? I think so. Remind me what happened. You know, it was 2021, and I remember it so vividly because I was calling friends who lived in Houston, and they'd lost power. And what was crazy, Anges, they weren't alone. Millions of other people had lost power. I guess Texas is having blackouts because of how cold it is, which right now, I think it's seven degrees. I just woke up to a cold house because we have no power. It's Monday morning, and I think it's like in the 20s, and then tomorrow is supposed to be worse.

2:46When the power went out, people were really angry, and they wanted to find out why it happened, and especially who was at fault. And it's important to note that Texas is powered mostly by natural gas. And of course, it's got solar and wind and nuclear, but natural gas is the bulk of it. But Texas Republicans, including Governor Abbott, saw this as an opportunity to single out renewables as the cause for these blackouts. Some wind turbines went offline, and suddenly, wind energy became the bad guy. When in fact, the natural gas plants, which provided most of Texas's electricity, weren't built to withstand the cold.

3:23And their equipment froze. So when they got hit, the grid got hit. Big time. So natural gas let us down. That's right. But Republicans jumped on this opportunity to introduce a bunch of anti-renewable bills. But guess what? Almost none of them passed. Okay. How come? Well, because wind is big business in Texas. About a quarter is powered by wind. Anjali, Texas has the largest amount of wind energy in the United States. Wow. 25 % of their grid is powered by wind? How did that happen? Well, Ange, just wait. You're going to love this story. Hi, everyone. I'm Ryan Pinchot's room. And I'm Anjali Grover.

4:08Welcome to Speed and Scale, a podcast from TED. This is the show where we focus on the best strategies to tackle climate change. We know the headlines are scary. We know climate change can feel overwhelming. This is the show that cuts through the fear to face things head on. We'll dig into the obstacles we're up against, we'll celebrate the wins, and we'll talk to people in unexpected places. All while focusing on the things that we can speed up and scale up. Speaking of which, in 2021, we helped write the book, Speed and Scale. It lays out an action plan for solving our climate crisis. We spoke to a bunch of people, including climate experts and industry leaders.

4:47We wanted people to hear what we were hearing, that there's still opportunities out there to draw down emissions. And for a quick explainer, when we say emissions, we're talking about greenhouse gases that trap heat in our atmosphere. Gases like carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide. They come from a variety of sources, like driving your car or growing the food you eat. and they're often grouped together under one umbrella term, carbon emissions. Yeah, and these carbon emissions are so massive, they are measured in gigatons. One gigaton is about 2.2 trillion pounds. A gigaton is a lot. So if we're serious about making a dent in this problem, the gigatons are what we're after.

5:29In this show, we've mapped out where the gigatons of pollution are coming from, and we're bringing you the most impactful solutions to tackle climate change at scale. We're starting with electricity, because it's the single largest source of emissions worldwide. Then we're going to tackle deforestation, transportation, carbon removal, and so much more. Today, we're bringing you a story about the U.S. power grid, because the power grid alone generates a quarter of the United States' carbon emissions. And we're going to go to a place that I never expected, Texas. The state that epitomizes oil and gas is now the biggest producer of wind in the U.S.

6:08Let me repeat that. The biggest producer of wind in the United States is Texas. So how did a deep red Texas turn, well, you could say a shade of green?

6:29Okay, Ryan, what's the deal with Texas? Did it really turn green? Well, Ange, I needed to find that out myself. So I called around and I got introduced to Pat Wood. This is the guy in charge of Texas's Public Utility Commission, or PUC for short. This is the agency that regulates utilities. And Ange, this guy was really cool. Like cool for a regulator or cool cool? Like, cool, cool. And I wanted to talk to him because back in the 90s, he was the guy who helped write the policy that actually required Texas to build renewable energy. But I also wanted to talk to him because he started out not wanting to do anything with renewable energy.

7:10The guy grew up close to the town where oil was discovered. And then his boss was former Republican President George W. Bush. So I kind of walked into this interview not knowing what to expect. How does this guy become responsible for bringing wind to Texas? And Anjali, it turns out Pat has had a long relationship with energy, something that started out when he was just a kid. My grandfather was the head of the Gulf oil refinery there in Port Arthur for my whole life. I was Tom Hogan's grandson, and my grandmother Hogan, we'd drive through the plants. This was before the Clean Air Act went into place, and she'd go, that's good old bread and butter.

7:54And I just, I never understood that until I was old enough to understand bread and butter meant money. But it was like, that doesn't smell like bread, and it sure as hell doesn't smell like butter. It smells like kind of noxious sulfur. But, you know, just growing up there, I assumed every town had their own refinery. I mean, it's one of those things I would just never understand when my friend Jeff would come over from San Mateo. And I always would ask him, well, what's Charles Refinery? What brand are y 'all? It's like, are y 'all Gulf or Texaco or Mobil? It's just like, we don't have a refinery.

8:24We're in California. I'm like, oh, well, that's weird. That is so Texan. It's so endearing, his relationship with energy. Yeah. I think it makes sense, like why Texans are so connected to it. Yeah, yeah. Okay, but what's the turning point? When does Pat go from daydreaming about refineries to scaling up wind? Yeah, so when Pat was in his 30s, he was nominated by the governor, George Bush, to be the head of the Texas Public Utility Commission. In other words, he's the guy in charge of Texas electricity. And that's where he first heard about wind. Well, in those days, I would be down in Governor Bush's office every, say, three weeks or so to ask him advice about something.

9:08And one day I was in his office talking about something else, and I walked out the door. and back in those days you wore ties and I had of course suspenders because it was the 90s and I was a Republican yuppie and so it was just kind of the thing but I remember walking out that door like it was yesterday and Bush goes hey Wood and yes sir we like wind and I looked at him I was like what He goes, you heard me. Now go get smart on it. So I was just like, honestly depressed because I was like, wind? I mean, that's like Birkenstock and Volvo driving people in California. What do I have to do with that?

9:51So what did Pat have to do with that? Well, so Pat is now on this quest to make wind energy an important player on the Texas grid. And it turns out Texas had a law that guided Pat in the right direction. This 95 law said that the utilities have to consult their customers about energy issues. And to do this consultation, utilities have this tool called deliberative polling. And what it does is let's educate people about the issues and ask them their opinion after they're informed of all the pros and cons. So what it was, was a three-day weekend, like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 260-some-odd customers were there learning about the issues.

10:36Beautiful cross-section of Texas in age and diversity and ideology. I participated in it as a panelist for big groups, small groups. In some of these rooms, there was a one-way glass that I could look through. It was fascinating. I mean, just to see Texas at its best and rawest talking through all these issues, it was like the real world. Anjali, this is so cool. Deliberative polling is this technique where you get to bring a group of people together and have them debate and learn and then ultimately ask them how they feel about an issue. Yeah, it feels strangely democratic. It feels like it's the way it's supposed to all work.

11:18Honestly, I don't think it happens as often as it should. The funny thing that came out of this, Ryan, was that of all the things that were polled, two things really stood out and rose to the top. One was energy efficiency. Customers really got and understand the need for conservation. And then the second thing, which was, of course, the total shock to me, was renewable energy. customers in Texas uniformly in every section of the state said they loved renewable energy. That's amazing. Do you have any stories or examples of maybe one of the customers? I distinctly remember walking outside of the deliberative pole one day and an older man, I remember his name was Jim, I don't remember his last name, was out there having a cigarette.

12:13and I said, what are you thinking about things, Jim? And he got that finger and he put it on my chest with that smoke blowing in my eyes right under his hand. He said, Pat, we got to clean up the goddamn air. It needs to be cleaned up and we need to get more of this renewable energy. And I thought, man, that couldn't be any better said than from smoking Jim in Beaumont, Texas. It was just one of those moments you'll never forget. We need some more goddamn renewable energy. Ryan, love that. I really needed to know, how did Jim get so convinced that renewable energy was important? What made him embrace it?

12:56It's something that hit Jim and me, being from Southeast Texas, pretty clearly that energy is absolutely essential to our way of life. and I would look at what resonated with people is the renewable energy's here. It's Texan. It's blowing from God's breath and it's shining off his face. That's coming to us for free. Aren't we smart enough to take something free and do something good with it? And I really do think that that kind of resonates with people on all parts of the political spectrum is it's about the technology and the joy of embracing something that is new and is positive and it's free.

13:48And gosh, why can't we figure that out? And so we did. And what did you do with the results? At the end of this, I reported the data to the governor. What he said? And he said, well, what do you think he said? He put those glasses on and looked over it closely and got to the bottom and looked over those glasses because those little half glasses. So he kind of looked up. You've probably seen him do this as president. And he said, Woody, told you. And he just laughed. That laugh he does. And I said, well, gosh. And he goes, well, this needs to be in our bill. I said, well, what? He goes, they want conservation, they want renewable energy.

14:33That needs to be in our bill. So that's when I went out to figure out what do we do about both. So what did Pat do about both? What happened? Well, it was a lot simpler than I thought. Pat took all this information and he put it into an energy bill. And it made utilities use a certain amount of renewables. Senate Bill 7, signed by Governor George W. Bush in 1999, set up the Renewable Portfolio Standard Program, which said the state wants to add 2 ,000 megawatts of renewable energy over the next 10 years. So just like that, they pass a bill, no political drama? I guess there's always political drama, but Texas got this done before New York, before even California.

15:20That's insane. I'm still confused, though, as to why Bush signed this into law. I know. So I asked him this exact question. For George Bush, the governor, what were his motivations? Because in a lot of ways, this took, I imagine, some political capital to do. And so from his point of view, share what his motivations were. Governor Bush grew up in Midland, Texas. And Midland is really a very windy spot. I go there now and again, and it is a hair-blowing-back kind of place. You get off the airplane, and there's just a lot of wind. And so he knew that that was a really vibrant resource and that that could actually be captured into electricity.

16:01So he knew that just kind of intrinsically as a West Texan. You know, Bush's instincts obviously were driven by the politics of Texas, which are he's a Republican governor, but he's got kind of a split Senate and a Democratic House. So a lot of stuff got done toward the middle on education, on prisons, on tax reform, and on energy issues. What was the moment when that bill passed? To see that mandate pass in Texas, what did that mean to you? You know, it's funny. It wasn't a passion of mine. Renewable energy was not virtuous or all these other things that I think have been attributed to it. I cared about it because I've got this penchant to care about people getting discriminated against.

16:53And this was a new industry and a new technology that was being kind of elbowed to the side by the big gas, big coal and nuke in the traditional utilities. And it's just like, don't. I mean, that's just not who we are. We don't pick on new people. We invite them to the party. So let's level that playing field so these guys can compete. Honestly, Ryan, it wasn't this victory of clean versus traditional. It just was that a new technology got a chance to win or lose based on its merits. And boy, did they ever win. So the renewable energy standard got things started, but how did the renewables win, as you say?

17:40When did the wind and solar revolution really take off? The real boom started in about 2001 and 2002. And wind was just trucking full speed ahead in its lane because it saw this wide open opportunity in Texas. A lot of land, easy to interconnect, no need to get a regulatory permit, great wind resource, and boom, it just took off. Solar was probably a decade later. And then batteries, which I'm doing now for my day job, is probably a decade behind that. And so each of those have started off expensive and then gotten cheaper, dramatically cheaper over kind of short period of time and gotten to the point where wind and solar now are the two cheapest ways to produce electricity.

18:35And I mean, that happened in, what, 25 years, Ryan. That's pretty phenomenal. This is amazing. One thing I'm missing about all of this is when you generate power, you still have to find a way to transmit it. So how do they do that? I definitely asked them about that. And Texas had a solution, A brilliant one. So wind is ramping up. Solar is ramping up. But how does the state deal with transmission? Does it pass more policies? I mean, you have to get all of this energy from the rural, windy, sunny areas to where people live. The transmission expansion is a very important piece. I'm glad you identified that because if we don't expand the transmission, we don't get there.

19:20So in 2005, the state legislator who I was friends with, David Swinford, called me up and said, Hey, Pat, I've got this idea. We're building a lot of kind of great wind facilities in kind of B-minus places on the grid. when we've got all this A-plus wind that's just sitting there trapped. And so we're going to figure out where those A-plus areas are and build the infrastructure to get there. So basically, the short story on that is, if you build it, they will come. We call it Field of Dreams. From 2007 to 2013, the transmission project was built, $7 billion to connect about 18 ,000 megawatts of new resources.

20:10So the entire West Texas grid effectively got beefed up. This is so critical. Basically, what Pat was saying is that they went and found the windiest places and said, we're going to first build power lines there. And by doing that, it incentivized companies to build right next to them. And just like he said, if you build it, they will come. I'm sure I sound like a broken record, Ryan, but I can't believe how logical this is. They were thinking ahead. It's shockingly rare. It was incredible planning. It was so logical. But it was also expensive. You know, this cost Texans about$300 each. So I was shocked that there was enough political capital for this plan to pass.

20:55So I asked him, politically, how on earth did this get passed? Rick Perry was governor and understood the importance of developing our own resources here. The return by having lower cost renewable electricity on our grid would pay for the$7 billion investment five times over in 10 years. So that's like putting down a nickel to get a quarter. It was very non-ideological. It certainly wasn't wrapped in what is kind of now today become this renewables are left and polluting fossil fuels are right. It was better for Texas customers who were paying their bills. And oh, by the way, it happened to be better for the air.

21:47And oh, by the way, it happened to be better for technology too. But at the beginning, it was better for the wallet. So that's a twist. I was thinking it was just going to be some huge money suck, but it actually is an investment that makes a ton of sense. It has real returns. Totally. So much of this financially was the way to go. Okay, but to be fair, this must have also taken some handholding. Like wind and solar couldn't have just started up on their own. There must have been some upfront costs. And that's why I thought Pat might have had another motive. Do you think of yourself as a climate activist, being responsible for the largest deployment of clean energy?

22:24I absolutely do not think of myself as a climate activist. I mean, that's just not, I would not, that would, you could name 20 things, titles. I wouldn't get that in my top 20. Pat, what are you? Oh, gosh. I mean, I don't, you're asking me stuff I've never been asked in my entire life. Wow. Let me just think about that question, Ryan, because I'm going to get it right. What am I? I'm a kid who grew up where a lot of injustice happened. Yeah, I grew up in a town where we, 1970, we desegregated the public schools. And my parents were very involved in the desegregation movement from the supportive side.

23:08And, you know, some of the people in our town moved to all white cities nearby or places where their kids wouldn't have to go to school with minority kids. And, you know, I was taught in my church and by my parents that that's not what Jesus would do. So we stayed in Port Arthur. And, you know, I grew up in a very diverse environment. And I love that. And I think that formed who I am. And it's formed my opinions about, you know, we benefit so much more by having a lot of different voices at the table and a lot of different technologies and players around the table. That's what makes us strong.

23:50So that's kind of who I am. You know, I guess I'm a social justice warrior of my own type. I laugh at that term thinking of AOC and those kind of people. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think all the things that I tried to do as a regulator that are having, I think, beneficial impact today derived from the fact that I was hell-bent to implement the statute that required nondiscrimination. And that's what got us where we are today. So I think if you had to say, what am I today? I'm just a lawyer who tried to do what the law told me to do on being non-discriminatory. And so, again, the virtue of this whole story is that the renewable energy happens to be the cheapest energy.

24:46And so thank you, God, for that win-win you gave us because we're going to take it to the mat and go all the way. And, you know, I think we have here. And I think the rest of the country can do the same.

25:07Ryan, to be honest, I really didn't think that you were going to tell me anything I didn't know. But I just, I'm reeling. I can't believe this happened in the 90s. I can't believe it happened in Texas. I can't believe it happened under a Republican governor that would go on to become a Republican president. I know. This like totally shatters every stereotype or preconception of where clean energy gets deployed the best. Seriously. I totally would have expected this to happen in California, someplace else. This really turns my world upside down. The other thing that I really can't believe, and Ryan, we work in climate day in, day out.

25:43How on earth have we not heard this story? That's a great question. Why didn't we hear about this? And I think it's because this has become such a partisan issue. That's the loudest voice in the room. And to be quite honest, you just have to go look at the data. And the data itself is what cuts through. So I'm still wondering, because Ryan, you started looking out for a story that brought down emissions from the grid. So did Texas succeed in doing this? It absolutely did. Their deployment cut emissions from the grid by over a quarter. Wow. I'm speechless. And you've got to remember, Ange, Texas was growing that entire time.

26:20This to me feels like the most unexpected part of the whole story. So Texas scales up wind and it reduces fossil fuels needed for the grid. That's just so incredible. But Ryan, something's not checking out. Texas is an oil and gas state. So what about all that oil and gas? That's not going away, is it? That's right. Texas has got a ton of oil and gas. And unfortunately, they're drilling more and building more petrochemical plants. So when you look at Texas's overall CO2 levels, not just from the grid, those have been going up. And so Texas has a lot of work to do on electrifying its transportation and cleaning up its industry.

27:00But I do think at the end of the day, this is a story about opportunity. You know, I was struck by just Pat's hunger and mentality, right? You build it, they will come. And somewhere along the way, renewables became a polarizing political topic. But at that point, they were too profitable to go away. It proves, I think, that clean energy is both a smart business decision and a smart climate decision. I think Texas did so many things right. And their playbook was simple. Add renewables to the grid and then make sure you connect them. Find the windiest places, find the sunniest places. These are things other states can easily copy.

27:40And I did a little research, and I found that 32 states have standards like what Texas put into place. So just 18 more to go?

27:56Speed and Scale is a podcast from TED. It's hosted by me, Anjali Grover, and Ryan Pinchasaram. The episode was produced by Sarah Craig from Pushkin Industries. Production support from Tali Emlin. This show is edited by Van Van Chang and our fact checkers are Julia Dickerson, Kate Williams, and Jen Nam. The show is sound designed and mixed by Hansel Shi. Our executive producers are Daniela Balareso and Consanza Gallardo. Special thanks to Jonathan Mallow and Roxanne Highlash.

28:38Thank you.