The Austin City Council will vote Thursday on a plan to produce electricity in the future, which includes building a new natural gas power plant. The city’s electric utility said the proposal would provide low-cost, reliable power, but some environmental groups call it an abandonment of Austin’s ambitious climate goals. Several members of the city council also want the plan to be modified.

In 2021, the Austin City Council adopted a Climate Equity Planwith the goal of making Austin a net-zero emissions city by 2040 by significantly reducing regional greenhouse gas emissions and negating the impacts of remaining emissions through the use of carbon offsets and other environmental policies.

A large part of achieving these goals involved Austin Energy continuing its transition to emissions-free renewable energy and closing the Fayette coal-fired power plant that the city owns in partnership with the Lower Colorado River Authority.

But the energy demands of a growing city – and the costs of importing energy from often distant wind and solar farms – have created a need to produce more electricity closer to where it is consumed .

This prompted the utility to propose a “peaker” plant as part of its power generation plan, the Austin’s plan for energy resources, production and climate protection until 2030. These plants generally operate during periods of peak energy demand. The utility says the plant would only operate during times of high energy costs and high demand, and is necessary to maintain affordable and reliable electricity.

Lisa Martin, chief operating officer of Austin Energy, told KUT that a strategy that relies solely on carbon-free technologies like big batteries and rooftop solar “doesn’t meet all of our growing needs and does not mitigate all reliability and affordability risks. »

Martin said the utility’s proposed power plant would produce electricity by running turbines, much like jet engines.

She said it was much cheaper and less costly operational commitment than an earlier proposal to build a larger gas plant, known as a combined cycle plant, which would operate more frequently.

“The fact is, if technology evolves and we don’t need peakers in three, five, seven years… then they’ll probably have already paid for it themselves,” Martin said. “They’re pretty easy to package and sell.”

Austin Energy says the city would pay less to import electricity from the state grid operator if it had a peaking plant. Austin Energy paid more than $135 million for those costs in 2022, Martin said; in 2023, it paid $150 million.

“Stepping back on our climate objectives”

While many agree the city should generate more electricity closer to home, climate advocates argue the utility should explore non-carbon emitting solutions.

“We are regressing on our climate goals and making our air quality worse,” Austin Electric Utility Commission member Kaiba White told KUT.

Instead of building a new gas plant, she said, Austin could maintain its reliable electricity supply by building more rooftop solar, investing in large-scale batteries and increasing utility programs. energy efficiency.

White says Austin Energy wants new gas-fired power generation to avoid purchasing power from other providers when costs are high, not necessarily to boost energy reliability.

“It’s in response to high (energy) prices that they’re going to put in these peaks,” she said. “It’s a financial investment, at least as much as a reliable investment, and I think even more of a financial investment.”

The big picture

The debate over the gas plant proposal is part of the broader question of where Austin stands in terms of meeting its climate goals and how much money it is willing to spend to get there.

Austin Energy’s efforts to divest from the Fayette coal plant have blocked because, he says, the Lower Colorado River Authority made exiting the partnership too costly.

White, who also works as a climate policy and research specialist for the group Public Citizen, says other parts of the proposed generation plan weaken Austin’s climate commitments. She has described them publicly here.

She and other critics of the plan hope the City Council will amend it this week to include stricter mandates and measures to push the utility toward decarbonization.

It can happen. On Monday, several members of the city council announced proposed changes to the plan.

A calls for more research into greener alternatives to gas-fired power plants and to “establish regular, clear reporting guidelines to the Council” on Austin Energy’s progress in meeting its emissions goals .

Austin Energy executives say the utility remains committed to its climate goals, even with the proposal for a new natural gas plant.

“We are among the elite of utilities across the country with our carbon-free goals by 2035,” Martin told KUT. “We reaffirm that goal in this plan.”

The plan will be discussed Tuesday during a City Council work session and is expected to be voted on Thursday.