Austin News

Rep. Jeff Cason (R-Bedford) recently introduced House Bill 2084, the End Tax Abatements for Renewable Energy Act, which would stop Chapter 313 tax breaks for renewable energy companies.

“Renewable energy is the most subsidized form of energy production in this country,” Cason said in a Feb. 23 statement. “This subsidization has created an overdependence in Texas on unreliable wind and solar power, which significantly contributed to the energy catastrophe of last week.”

Renewable energy companies currently receive Chapter 313 tax abatements, scheduled to expire next year, which allow school districts to lower the taxable value of properties. In return, the energy companies are required to create a minimum number of jobs – 25 permanent positions in urban areas and 10 in rural communities.

Texas lawmakers are proposing legislation that would extend tax breaks and remove job creation requirements for renewable energy companies, according to Houston Republic.

HB 1556 would extend current tax abatements until 2032, while eliminating the minimum job creation requirement. These tax breaks would be worth more than $1.7 billion to companies in 2021 and 2022.

Some critics argue that Chapter 313 tax abatements shifts the burden of costs from big corporations to Texas taxpayers.

“313 abatements overall take money from average taxpayers and give it to big corporations so they end up subsidizing big corporations,” Bill Peacock, policy director at the Energy Alliance, previously told Austin News. “What big corporations are not paying in taxes, average Texans are.”

Peacock said that the tax abatements will further drive the development of renewable energy in Texas. He fears that this will make the state even more dependent on wind and solar power, which proved unreliable during the recent winter storms.

“The really big harm is that these local tax abatements encourage the development of wind and solar generation in Texas and the federal government is doing a pretty good job of that too,” Peacock told Austin News. “It has created instability and unreliability in the Texas electrical grid and that has cost a lot of money to fix.”

Cason has introduced a pair of bills targeting Chapter 313 tax abatements. HB 2084 would prevent renewable energy projects from receiving Chapter 313 tax abatements and HB 2971 proposes to end the Chapter 313 program completely.

“I think it’s absurd that Texas taxpayers are being forced to pay for “green new deal” initiatives that have contributed to the failure of our electric grid," Cason said in a release. "I take the failures of last week very seriously and this is one of the needed reforms to make sure the past failures never happen again.”