The Public Utility Commission of Texas

In the 1970s, Texas utility companies funded research that showed that burning fossil fuels harms the environment.

Yet as The Texas Observer reports, despite awareness of the damage their activities were causing, electric utilities spent the next three decades publicly denying the results of their own studies, and attempting to undermine climate science.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas is proposing a change in the running of the state’s electricity market according to State Impact Texas.

Power companies get paid when they produce electricity, but the new proposal adds a second payment for owning or building power plants.  The goal is to encourage the building of new power plants.  New plants would help avoid power shortages that have caused rolling blackouts.