Especially in Texas, former Governor George W. Bush signed a bill to lead the way in being a clean energy powerhouse

 

 

 

Yesterday we celebrated Presidents Day, a time to remember the nation’s current and past presidents. This year The Green Rangers reflect on one of our own former governor and president, George W. Bush and his commitment to lead the way in becoming a leader in generating carbon-free electricity. In 1999, George W. Bush signed a massive bill deregulating the state’s energy sector. It empowered individual consumers to decide who to buy their electricity from, instead of being forced to use options chosen by local officials.

Bush’s impact

     The Wall Street Journal reported that as part of the 1999 law, there was a provision that called for 2,000 megawatts of renewable power capacity by 2009 that milestone came four years early. Bush’s successor, Rick Perry, raised the bar to 10,000 megawatts by 2025.

 

How does Texas continue to be impacted today?

 

     In a 2017 report from Environment America, a nonpartisan research center, ranked Texas first among all states in “clean energy progress” between 2007 and 2016. The report affirms what state and national headlines have been saying for years: Texas is a renewable energy powerhouse. The report showed that the majority of the renewable energy comes from wind power.

     In 2016, Texas produced an amazing 58,000 gigawatt hours of wind power generation, far more than any other state in the country. The Environmental America noted, “During the early morning hours on one day in February 2017, wind power supplied more than half of Texas’s electricity demand,”

https://windexchange.energy.gov/states/tx

     George W. Bush paved the way with his law putting Texas at the front of producing and using wind as a supply of energy. East Texas has so much that we can use to our advantage, because of this we are still seeing a spike in wind turbine production today. Next time you take a trip to the east take a look at all the wind turbines and think about how far we’ve come as a state since 1999.