Governor Signs King Bill to Promote Energy Diversification

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This week State Representative Phil King (R-Weatherford) joined Governor Rick Perry in Dallas at a ceremonial bill signing for House Bill 469. King authored HB 469 this past legislative session to keep Texas as the leader in energy innovation by continuing Texas’ significant progress in energy diversification.

“If we are going to bring down the cost of electricity we must learn how to build a clean coal power plant,” King said. “This legislation will incent investors, in a competitive, free market manner, to take the economic risk of building the first ever clean coal/carbon sequestration plant, ultimately creating jobs and new technology. This bill is great for the environment, and truly a winner for Texas.”

HB 469 is based on a free market solution to expanding our energy portfolio in Texas. It will offer tax breaks to bring out the best in private industry to develop and build the first clean coal plants in the world using this innovative technology that captures 70 percent of the carbon dioxide resulting from the generation of electricity by the facility. The bill also gives a severance tax break to oil production companies that use carbon from these plants for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), a process by which carbon is injected into an oil field to recover oil that would otherwise be unreachable by using standard methods.

“Not only will these plants be a boost to the economy, but the carbon used from these plants will allow Texas to recover billions of barrels of oil that we wouldn’t have been able to reach otherwise,” King explained. “That’s why this legislation was such a unique energy solution for Texas. It promotes our energy diversification and keeps us at the cutting edge of energy technology, but also helps us further stimulate our economy by recovering hard to reach oil fields.”

The construction and operation of these clean coal projects in Texas will be a huge addition to the Texas economy. The positive economic impacts of this legislation are numerous, including placing Texas as the leader to develop and export this new technology to other states, creating over 2,000 jobs per plant and pouring billions of dollars in to the economy in capital investment.