Two more natural gas power plant projects have been denied loans from Texas’ $5 billion program meant to attract more electricity supply for the state’s primary power grid.
Including these two denials, almost five gigawatts of power plant projects have been denied funding or voluntarily withdrawn from the taxpayer-backed Texas Energy Fund, or enough capacity to power approximately 1.2 million homes. That’s nearly half of the loan program’s goal of incentivizing 10 gigawatts of new gas-fired power generation.
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Analysts from the investment bank Citigroup wrote that the Texas Energy Fund was “falling apart” in a research note two weeks ago. Now, as lawmakers contemplate setting aside billions more of taxpayer dollars for the fund, the most recent denials add even more data points to concerns that the program is flawed.
One person who says the Texas Energy Fund has “a lot of room for improvement” is Jorge Castellanos, chief power officer for the Frontier Group of Companies. The company’s application was one of the two proposals denied Tuesday by the Public Utility Commission of Texas for “fail(ing) to meet due diligence requirements.”…