This white paper, building on a preliminary summary version published in May 2021, shows that Texas policymakers could tackle spiking summer and winter power demands while reducing—not raising—overall costs to households and businesses. Incentivizing energy-saving upgrades in homes and commercial buildings—and rewarding electric customers for voluntarily shifting some of their energy use to off-peak hours—would reduce peak electrical demand and improve grid reliability at a far lower cost than building proposed new, subsidized power plants. Individual households would see average monthly net savings of about $13 on their electric bills.
The full white paper provides details on our ten recommended programs, updates several numbers from the earlier summary, and includes a detailed alternative scenario showing that about 80% of the peak reduction benefits can be achieved at about 50% of the cost by expanding programs with the largest and most cost-effective savings.
This report was updated in October 2023 with minor changes to correct a few text and calculation errors.
