Is Greg Abbott corrupt? In my opinion, yes, without a doubt. If you are tired of supporting corrupt politicians and billionaires, vote them out this November. Keep more money in your pocket.
Well, thank the Republicans and, in particular, Greg Abbott for shifting our hard-earned money to those ever-needy billionaire friends of his.
The way it works is that here in Texas, there are two parts to our electrical bill: one part is for the actual electricity that we use, and the other part is for the distribution, the poles, the lines, etc., the cost of getting that power to our homes.
We, homeowners, pay a much higher percentage for that distribution than commercial properties do.
Here’s what the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute found in their affordability report: since 2002, the transmission and distribution share of your electric bill has grown from 28% to 39%. It is now the fastest-growing part of what you pay every month, not the electricity, but the delivery. And it’s about to get much worse.
Oncor, the utility that serves the Dallas-Fort Worth area, has announced a $36 billion capital spending plan for 2025 through 2029. CenterPoint, which serves Houston, is spending $21 billion through 2030. On top of that, ERCOT (the entity that manages the Texas grid) has approved $38 billion in additional transmission projects, including a new high-voltage “power superhighway” to West Texas. TEPRI estimates over $96 billion in total planned investment in transmission and distribution through 2030.
Every dollar of that investment gets recovered from ratepayers. Residential ratepayers are specifically at a higher rate per kilowatt-hour than commercial and industrial customers. In CenterPoint’s territory, residential customers use 33% of the electricity but bear 49% of the transmission costs. That gap is baked into the rate design, approved by Republican-appointed regulators, and it’s getting worse.
The reason for all those additional distribution costs is those beautiful data centers that get all kinds of tax breaks. Those centers use a lot of electricity, so the companies that are in charge of distribution, CenterPoint here in Houston, have to build more lines, which costs a lot of money, and then they shift or shaft us with the costs.
TEPRI projects that by 2030, average residential electricity prices in the ERCOT competitive market will rise another 29%, on top of the 30% they already rose between 2021 and 2025. For a low- or moderate-income household, that means the average annual electricity bill climbs from around $1,682 today to $2,269 by 2030. The portion of that bill that exceeds what those households can reasonably afford doubles from $420 a year to $863.
Tax breaks for the billionaires.
Texas has been giving data centers a sales tax exemption since 2013, quietly expanded under Republican control until it became one of the largest corporate giveaways in state history. The Texas Tribune reported last month that this exemption will cost the state $3.2 billion in revenue over the next two years alone. Last year alone, it exceeded one billion dollars.
… a billion dollars a year flows out of the public treasury so that hyperscale data center operators like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and UAE-based G42 can buy servers and cooling equipment without paying sales tax.