| Vote Recommendation | Economic Freedom | Property Rights | Personal Responsibility | Limited Government | Individual Liberty |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No | Negative | Neutral | Neutral | Negative | Negative |
Relating to preparing for, preventing, and responding to weather emergencies and power outages; increasing the amount of administrative and civil penalties.
Estimated Two-year Net Impact to General Revenue Related Funds for SB3, Committee Report 2nd House, Substituted : a negative impact of ($38,745,794) through the biennium ending August 31, 2023.
The bill would make no appropriation but could provide the legal basis for an appropriation of funds to implement the provisions of the bill
SB 3 would do several things to respond to weather emergencies and power outages in Texas. The bill would create a power outage alert system and recruit various organizations for the purpose of sending power outage alerts, establish protocols for issuing such alerts across a variety of media platforms, require categorization of storms, and create response protocols for different agencies to prepare for storms
SB 3
would establish the Texas Energy Disaster Reliability Council to prevent
natural gas supply failures or power outage failures during a disaster by
implementing emergency management procedures, and to maintain critical
infrastructure records and monitor supply chains, among other related duties.
The Texas Electricity Supply Chain Security and Mapping Committee would be formed to map the state's electricity supply chain, identify critical infrastructure, and establish best practices.
SB 3
would create the State Energy Plan Advisory Committee and create a state energy
plan to improve reliability and affordability in the energy market.
Utility providers would be required to perform weatherization measures and the PUC would be required to ensure sufficient ancillary services are available and to adopt a system to allocate load shedding during an energy emergency.
Several
measures would be taken to control electricity and utility pricing and ensure
providers do not take aggressive measures to collect payments after a disaster.
SB 3 would add significant new regulation to the electricity
industry, including Section 12 of the bill which would require generators to
spend heavily on weatherization. The costs of compliance with new regulations
would be passed on to consumers making electricity more expensive. Generators
have plenty of profit incentive to undertake their own weatherization measures
to ensure they are not knocked offline in the future. We oppose SB 3 which infringes on limited government and free market principles.