Flickr photo / Texas Photo Wrangler

From Public Citizen’s Texas office:

Everything’s bigger in Texas, including greenhouse gas emissions. If Texas were its own country, it would be the 8th largest greenhouse gas contributor in the world. Texas has a special place in the US economy as its gas tank and its powerplant, but with energy prices skyrocketing, we can no longer afford to let things stay as they are.

Luckily, with every challenge comes opportunity. This week the Texas Public Utility Commission will meet to discuss and possibly decide on upgrading the power grid infrastructure to make sure that we can build new clean, renewable sources of energy in West Texas (where all the sun and wind is) and get it to the people in the major population centers in East Texas.

Wind power in Texas is now a cheaper source of electricity than fossil fuel alternatives. Building newer transmission lines, a so-called “electric superhighway,” is the best way to quit our addiction to fossil fuels. Texas citizens can make their voices heard by going to leaderslisten.org and signing on to the online petition sponsered by State Rep. Mike Villareal.

Want to learn more? Read our press release about our news conference this morning, or read the study and policy paper here. You can also watch a video about renewable energy in Texas and how we can save $1.2 billion dollars here.