Lawmakers tasked the Public Utility Commission with overseeing the Texas Energy Fund, though the agency has no experience running a loan program.
Texas governor visiting Houston to make announcement on border security2 teens hurt in drive-by shooting blocks away from NRG StadiumLaundry day is so much easier with this viral cleanerThe Texas agency overseeing a $5 billion low-interest loan program to help build new power plants, and the firm it’s paying millions to manage it, missed red flags on an application and chose the project as a finalist for a loan.
Gleeson acknowledged at the hearing that the agency and Deloitte, the firm the PUC contracted to administer the Texas Energy Fund, should have caught the flaws in Aegle’s application.Gleeson said the project never would have won final approval for a loan because of existing guardrails in the process, but added that the PUC will review its processes and cut Deloitte’s
“There’s a lot of pressure to get money out the door” on an agency that has no experience running a program like this, said Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin., lawmakers and experts said the agency likely needed more resources to handle all the new responsibilities it’s been given to shore up the grid and the state’s power market.
Notwithstanding the bumpy rollout, Walt Baum, president of Powering Texans, a trade group that represents power generators, said that the program is sound. Critics noted that the loans did not guarantee more power on the grid because companies could retire older power plants and electricity-hungry industries like artificial intelligence could eat up any new capacity.
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