AUSTIN, Texas — On Thursday, the Austin City Council approved Austin Energy’s Resource, Generation and Climate Protection Plan to 2035.
The unanimous vote capped off a packed final city council meeting of 2024, which featured an agenda of more than 140 items.
The vote came after about an hour of public comment, where dozens of Austinites showed up to speak out both in favor and against the plan.
Austin Energy said the proposal will provide low-cost energy, but some environmental groups said it abandons the city’s climate goals.
“There are some major loopholes that prevent us from truly going carbon-free, and if done the wrong way, there are ways in which this will increase air pollution,” Shane Johnson with the Lonestar Sierra Club said. “On the hottest days of the year, when ozone is already a problem, they’re adding new units, and they run all their old units, air pollution absolutely will increase, and that’s going to harm the people, the communities of color, and the people and the kids living and playing and going to school near there.”
In 2021, the city council adopted a climate equity plan with the goal of making the city net zero emissions by 2040. After Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 and the peak demand for energy over the last two summers, the utility company has been looking for ways to provide reliable energy consistently.
Austin Energy COO Lisa Martin said that the energy demand from a growing population and the costs of importing wind and solar power created a need to generate power closer to home.
“It prioritizes customer energy solutions and promotes reliability, affordability and sustainability,” Martin said. “It protects our most vulnerable. It’s resilient to extreme weather, it’s flexible, it’s innovative, and it’s built to adapt to changing conditions.”
The plan calls for Austin Energy to make further progress toward an industry-leading goal of being 100% carbon-free by 2035.
“The plan provides responsibility for Austin Energy to meet our current and future challenges,” Martin said. “It reflects our community’s values and priorities, and it keeps Austin a leader on the path to a carbon-free future.”
Leaders with Austin Energy have also said the transmission congestion and increasing cost of importing energy into the city have been major challenges recently.
The plan calls on Austin Energy to expand solar options and greater use of customer-installed battery storage, phase out coal and expand the usage of clean, renewable resources such as wind and solar.
Council member Allison Alter said that what Austin Energy does next and their choices as they execute the plan will be crucial.
“As we strive for reliability, affordability, sustainability and equity, the trade-offs are real. We confront complicated interdependencies and implementation difficulties with every decision. All of this means, in my view, that our utility needs flexibility and a continued culture of innovation to navigate these goals,” Alter said. “It is my hope that the plan before us provides this flexibility while clearly communicating our values and expectations without about priorities and key strategies for achieving them, as well as our values.”
After holding five workshops with the community this year, Austin Energy found that Austinites’ No. 1 priority for their energy was reliability. The other two qualities were affordability and environmental sustainability, respectively.
“This Austin Energy generation plan is not only about generating electricity, it’s about the legacy that we need for generations to come,” Council Member Venessa Fuentes said. “I’m proud that we, as a council, through this plan, remain committed to addressing climate change while we balance the needs of our community for affordable, reliable energy.”
Austin Energy said it is already 70% carbon-free in terms of generation, but to supplement all the other energy demand, it plans to use “Peaker units.”
“Peakers,” as they are referred to, are described as jet engines connected to generators to produce energy. The catch is that they are not always on, only during critical situations or “peak” demand.
However, environmental groups feel the city and Austin Energy should be working toward using other carbon-free sources like battery and solar instead of gas.
“We can do utility-scale solar, utility-scale batteries along with expanding programs to save money on our bills and excess electricity that use the same when the grid is tight,” Johnson said. “With those things, we can re-evaluate if gas speakers are truly necessary in a couple of years.”
Another point of contention is the Fayette Power Plant, a coal-fired power plant in Fayette County. The city’s been trying to cut ties with it for years. Mayor Kirk Watson has said previously that he wants the city to shut down its portion of the power plant by January 2029.
“We cannot meet the goals of this city without shutting that down, and yet, here we are,” Kaiba white, a climate policy specialist with Public Citizen’s Texas office, said. “It’s 2024, and they’re more than two years overdue on their past commitment to shut it down, with no plan being put forward no schedule, and no metrics for how they might evaluate future proposals to shut down Fayette.”
Council member José Velásquez, who grew up in East Austin a few blocks from the Holly Street Power Plant, talked about its impact on his life.
“I’ve seen experience firsthand the detrimental impacts of fossil fuel energy generation on low-income communities and communities of color,” Velásquez said. “Environmental justice and the impacts of energy generation on public health has got to be central to any conversation we have on energy now and for future generations.”
City council members made several amendments to the plan before approving it today. They include changes to reporting requirements for emissions and energy goals, requiring investments in batteries and requiring the utility to look into other energy options before investing in natural gas “Peaker” plants.
“This plan reflects Austin Energy’s leadership towards a clean energy future with greater investments in conservation, energy efficiency, renewable energy like wind and solar, and battery storage,” Fuentes said. “I believe that with the amendments that we’ve adopted today, our leadership in pursuing a carbon-free future is reflected in this plan.”
Council member Ryan Alter authored several of the amendments, acknowledged that not everyone in the room was happy with the final plan, but said the plan continues a percent of Austin leading the charge on climate and sustainability.
“The lens through which I look at this generation plan is for the next generation. Climate change is happening. It’s happening because of our actions, and it will take our actions to get out. It’s not just not kind to our planet. It’s not kind to our world and our health, respiratory diseases, asthma, heat-related illness,” Ryan Alter said.
However, city council members said the plan is not the end of the conversation, and they believe there is more work to do related to the climate and ensuring the city follows through on its climate goals.
“As our city continues to grow, this plan sets us on course to keep up that growth while protecting ratepayers and ratepayers in our environment,” Fuentes said. “Our work on pursuing a secure and clean energy future is not over today.”