The tale of Georgetown’s farewell to coal, hello to wind and solar
By Polly Ross Hughes
Texas Energy Report
When people think of rock-solid conservative Republicans with zero patience for tree-hugging liberals, they think of places like Georgetown in Williamson County, home to the well-heeled, politically conservative retirement community known as Sun City.
“If there’s anything such as a conservative, Republican, independent bastion in Texas, which is a pretty conservative state, it is Georgetown, Texas,” said Fred Beach, assistant director for energy and technology policy at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.
If the aging population of Sun City made up roughly a quarter of Georgetown’s population, it made up about 75 percent of its voting population, Beach explained.
And, if there’s one thing that wasn’t on Beach’s mind when he joined the board of Georgetown’s 105-year-old municipal utility, it was winning accolades from environmentalists and green energy groups alike.
Beach, a naval veteran of 25 years where he qualified as a submariner, surface warfare officer, naval aviator and more, had a different interest in mind when he moved to one of the few areas untouched by Texas electric deregulation law: his own.
The city-owned utility was severing its 20-year contract to purchase 100 percent of its power from the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) in a bitter breakup akin to a three-year-long divorce proceeding, Beach told attendees at the Gulf Coast Power Association’s Fall Conference in Austin.
It was 2008. President Barack Obama had just moved into the White House, and there was serious talk in Washington of establishing cap-and-trade policies to deal with carbon emissions. LCRA’s power source to Georgetown was almost all fueled with coal, Beach said. Natural gas prices ranged from $5-$7, and the Texas was becoming a nuclear powerhouse, with the South Texas Project planning to expand. Wind power was just starting up in Texas, too.
So, the utility’s board decided it would power the town with 30 percent with plentiful coal-fired power, 30 percent nuclear with the town planning to become an equity partner in the South Texas nuclear expansion, 30 percent renewable since the private Southwestern University wanted to power itself with 100 percent renewable energy and the remainder natural gas. In quick order (Beach remembers 10 minutes of deliberation) the City Council stamped its approval on the strategic power source plan.
But things changed. Two years later, Japan endured the Fukushima nuclear disaster, putting an end to the town’s nuclear aspirations. Natural gas prices (thanks to hydraulic fracturing) were crashing, and wind power development was exploding in Texas.
“We’re sitting here dabbling in the open market. Things were changing rapidly,” Beach said.
So, what happened? A deeply conservative, Republican town in Central Texas transitioned its power source from nearly 100 percent coal-fired power via a 20-year purchase plan with LCRA to an unanticipated plan to power the town for the next 20 years with 100 percent renewable wind and solar power.
The power purchase agreements for wind were “lucrative and getting better,” Beach said. And, after briefly considering building its own solar generation on city land, the city decided a 20-year power purchase agreement was a better deal in solar as well.
“This time next year or maybe a few months later, Georgetown will be 100 percent renewable. This is a conservative republican bastion where there are no tree huggers,” Beach said, adding that the end result is “it looks like we’re actually going to lower our costs to customers.”