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AUSTIN – The Dallas Morning News reports that Texas electricity regulators picked 17 companies Thursday that will move forward with government-financed natural gas power plants. Public utility commissioners approved the proposals for fossil fuel power plants capable of generating enough electricity to power 2.4 million homes. If the companies prove their projects are viable, they will receive 3% loans from the taxpayer-funded Texas Energy Fund. The Texas Legislature created the fund in 2023 to finance about 10 gigawatts of electric generation capacity to shore up the ERCOT power grid. It is one of a myriad of legislative directives since the power blackouts of the 2021 winter storm killed more than 200 Texans. The fund currently includes $5 billion. Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have pledged to double funding ? a likelihood because the bill creating the energy fund was always planned to reach $10 billion.

Commissioners approved loans amounting to about $5.4 billion. Public Utility Commission spokesperson Ellie Breed said accrued earnings on the initial $5 billion of funding will let the agency fund all the projects if they are ultimately approved. “Today’s action to advance a set of applications to due diligence does not guarantee that those applicants will enter into a loan agreement,” Breed said in an email. Business interest in the program has remained high since the Public Utility Commission of Texas opened it up to proposals. The commission received 72 applications for $24.4 billion to finance 38 gigawatts of power generation. Texas’ all-time record for peak power demand is 85.6 gigawatts. Republican lawmakers, in response to the 2021 winter storm, have prioritized encouraging the construction of new, non-weather-dependent power plants. They created eligibility criteria for the program that favored natural gas-fueled power plants. Large-scale batteries, a rapidly emerging technology on the Texas grid, were prohibited from applying. The projects include proposed power plants from Irving-based Vistra Corp. as well as NRG and Calpine. The proposed sites are across Texas.

AUSTIN (AP) – A progressive business group sued Texas on Thursday over a 2021 law that restricts state investments in companies that, according to the state, “boycott” the fossil fuel industry.

The American Sustainable Business Coalition filed suit against Attorney General Ken Paxton and Comptroller Glenn Hegar, alleging that the law, Senate Bill 13, constitutes viewpoint discrimination and denies companies due process, in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The group asked a federal judge in Austin to declare the statute unconstitutional and permanently block the state from enforcing it.

“Texas has long presented itself as a business-friendly state where limited state regulation facilitates the ability of businesses to conduct themselves as they see fit,” lawyers for the group wrote. “Yet in 2021, the Legislature passed SB 13 to coerce and punish businesses that have articulated, publicized, or achieved goals to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.”

Known as the “anti-ESG law” — which stands for “environmental, social and governance” — Senate Bill 13 requires state entities, including state pension funds and the enormous K-12 school endowment, to divest from companies that have reduced or cut ties with the oil and gas sector and that Texas officials deem antagonistic to the fossil fuel industry.

In approving the legislation, Republican officials looked to protect Texas oil and gas companies and to bite back at Wall Street investors pulling financial support from the industry in an effort to incorporate climate risk into their investments and respond to pressure to divest from fossil fuels, which play an outsized role in accelerating the climate crisis.

In March, Texas Permanent School Fund, Austin, cut ties with BlackRock, which managed roughly $8.5 billion of the $52.3 billion endowment and which was listed by Texas as one of the companies that should not handle state business.

The statute defines “boycott” as, “without an ordinary business purpose, refusing to deal with, terminating business activities with, or otherwise taking any action that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with” a fossil fuel company. It also prohibits state agencies from doing business with a firm unless it affirms that it does not boycott energy companies. And it charges the state comptroller with preparing and maintaining a blacklist of companies based on “publicly available information” and “written verification” from the company.

In a statement, Hegar, the comptroller, called the lawsuit an “absurd” attempt to “force the state of Texas and Texas taxpayers to invest their own money in a manner inconsistent with their values and detrimental to their own economic well-being.”

“This left-wing group suing Texas,” he said, “is hiding their true intent: to force companies to follow a radical environmental agenda that is often contrary to the interests of their shareholders and to punish those companies that do not fall into lockstep and put politics above earnings.”

Paxton’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Texas has blacklisted more than 370 investment firms and funds, including BlackRock and funds within major banks like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. BlackRock, among other companies, pushed back on its designation as “boycotting” fossil fuels, calling the decision “not a fact-based judgment” and citing over $100 billion in investments in Texas energy companies.

“Elected and appointed public officials have a duty to act in the best interests of the people they serve,” a BlackRock spokesperson said at the time. “Politicizing state pension funds, restricting access to investments, and impacting the financial returns of retirees, is not consistent with that duty.”

In Thursday’s suit, the American Sustainable Business Coalition argued that the physical and financial risks posed by climate change are a legitimate investment and business consideration and cause for efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

The group said the Texas law was enacted to go after what Republican lawmakers saw as a “burgeoning fossil fuel discrimination movement,” and that it effectively “infringes rights of free speech and association under a scheme of politicized viewpoint discrimination” and allows Texas officials to “punish companies they believe are insufficiently supportive of the fossil fuel industry.”

The group argued that the law penalizes companies for their energy policies and membership in certain business associations, and compels them to adopt positions that align with Texas officials “as a condition” of doing business with state entities.

The suit also alleged that the law violates companies’ right to due process because vagueness in the statute “encourages arbitrary enforcement” and fails to provide blacklisted companies a fair process to contest their designation.

Texas blacklisted “the flagship investment funds” of Etho Capital and Sphere, two climate-focused firms represented by the American Sustainable Business Coalition, according to the lawsuit.

“Among ASBC’s many projects are efforts to encourage sustainable investing and sustainable business practices,” the lawsuit reads. “These are all cornerstones of the modern Texas economy. Yet, SB 13 takes aim at, and punishes, companies that speak about, aspire to, and achieve this goal.”

AUSTIN (AP) – Austin cybersecurity specialist CrowdStrike Holdings on Wednesday estimated it absorbed a roughly $60 million blow to its sales pipeline last month after its botched handling of a software update triggered a technology meltdown that stranded thousands of people in airports in addition to other exasperating disruptions.

Although the massive outage spooked customers that had been expected to close deals totaling $60 million during the final few weeks of CrowdStrike’s fiscal second quarter, executives running the Austin, Texas, company predicted it will still be able to cinch those contracts before its fiscal year ends in January 2025 because customers still have faith in its cybersecurity products despite the July 19 gaffe that froze up machines running on Windows software.

“Our mission is alive and well, and I know that CrowdStrike’s very best days are ahead of us,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz told analysts during a conference call covering the company’s April-July period. He also apologized for the company’s role in an outage that he said “will never be lost on me, and my commitment is to make sure this never happens again. The days following the incident were among the most challenging in my career because I deeply felt what our customers experienced.”

Kurtz’s reassuring comments, coupled with quarterly earnings that exceeded analysts’ projections, seemed to reassure investors who have been buying up CrowdStrike’s stock in recent weeks after initially dumping the shares in the wake of the havoc that the company blamed on a computer bug. The shares rose slightly in Wednesday’s extended trading, leaving the stock price 13% below its level before the tech outage — a loss of about $10 billion in market value. Earlier this month, CrowdStrike’s shares plunged nearly 25%, knocking off more than $20 billion in market value.

Even if the $60 million in deals that CrowdStrike expected to close before the tech meltdown never happen, that will be a minor price to pay compared to the massive bills those affected by the outage are facing.

Delta Air Lines, for instance, has estimated that it may owe its customers $380 million after the CrowdStrike-induced outage fouled up its computer systems so horribly that it had to cancel about 7,000 flights. Delta has threatened to sue CrowdStrike, which has insisted that the airline is using the tech outage as an excuse for its own bungling.

CrowdStrike didn’t provide an estimate of legal expenses it may face from the outage, but indicated the bills probably won’t be too burdensome.

“Our customer agreements contain provisions limiting our liability, and we maintain insurance policies intended to mitigate the potential impact of certain claims,” Burt Podbere, CrowdStrike’s chief financial officer, said during Wednesday’s conference call.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas is seeing some of the highest growth in clean energy jobs in the country, according to a new report by the Department of Energy. The number of jobs in wind, solar and other clean energy technologies in Texas increased 6% last year, behind only Idaho, which saw a 7.7% increase. Overall, the U.S. clean energy sector added 142,000 jobs last year, a 4.2% increase, more than double the growth rate for the larger economy. A nascent industry just a decade ago, clean energy now represents 42% of the jobs in the larger energy sector, according to the report. National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi heralded the report as a sign the Biden administration’s effort to expand the clean energy sector to replace manufacturing jobs lost to lower wage nations overseas was paying dividends.

“This isn’t just about steel in the ground but steel in the spine of the American middle class,” he said in a call with reporters Tuesday. Within the U.S. clean energy sector, electric vehicle jobs grew 11.4%, wind employment increased 4.6% and the solar jobs grew 5.3%. Through legislation including the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure law, President Joe Biden and Democrats have created hundreds of billions of dollars in tax incentives and low-interest loans to spur the rapid buildout of the country’s wind, solar, electric vehicle and battery industries. Among the notable additions, more than 15 gigawatts of power supply have been added to the Texas grid since last year, including 1.7 gigawatts of wind, 8.8 gigawatts of solar and 4.8 gigawatts of battery storage capacity. At the same time, jobs in fossil fuels are holding steady. Employment in the U.S. petroleum sector, a mainstay of the Texas economy, grew by 1.2% to more than 520,000 jobs last year. And the natural gas sector grew by 2% to more than 260,000 jobs.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that the median home price in Texas jumped 40% between 2019 and 2023, according to a new report from Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar’s office, the latest sign that it is becoming less and less affordable to live in most places across the state. Hegar warned on Tuesday that skyrocketing housing prices threaten the state’s economic growth, and he said a big part of the problem is not having enough homes to keep pace with demand. “My family moved here in the 1840s,” he said. “People say, ‘Oh, why’d they move here?’ Well, the same reason people are moving here in 2024. Why? For an economic opportunity for themselves and for future generations. A big piece of that economic opportunity is being able to afford and have a roof over your head.”

The new findings come as Texans say they are facing increasing barriers to homeownership and as state lawmakers search for ways to combat the soaring costs. The housing shortage is particularly acute for low- and middle-income households, the comptroller’s office found. Nearly two out of five households in Texas are cost-burdened, meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on housing. Texas is one of the worst states in the country for extremely low-income renters, with a shortage of nearly 700,000 units, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Across the state, incomes have not kept pace with increasing housing costs. In the Houston area, for instance, home prices increased by 128% over the past two decades, while the average income required to qualify for a mortgage increased by only 45%. On top of that, the pandemic created a “perfect storm” for rising housing prices, according to the report: Work from home policies drove people to the state, with the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area leading the country in population growth and net domestic migration between 2020 and 2023. Low interest rates and federal stimulus dollars helped drive demand, even as high construction costs and restrictive zoning laws stifled supply.

If Texas wants to rein in its high housing costs, it needs more homes, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar’s office said Tuesday — the latest sign that the state’s high home prices and rents have become a growing concern for the state’s top officials.

Homebuilding in Texas didn’t keep up as the economy boomed and millions of new residents moved here over the past decade, the comptroller’s 26-page report found. That lag in homebuilding left the state with a deep housing shortage: Texas needs 306,000 more homes than it has, according to one estimate cited in the report.

That shortage has fueled competition for a limited supply of housing, especially in the state’s major metro areas — sending housing costs soaring, forcing many would-be first-time homebuyers out of the market and leaving more than half of the state’s tenants spending too much on rent.

Texas’ relatively low cost of living has been a major draw for new residents and relocating companies. But Texas could lose that affordability advantage if local and state officials don’t find some way to boost the state’s housing supply, particularly for lower- and middle-income families, Hegar said.

“Is it a crisis today? I wouldn’t call it a crisis,” Hegar said in an interview with The Texas Tribune. “But if we don’t find some more solutions, we’re going to be in a crisis.”

Many Texans likely disagree. Ninety percent of Texans say that housing affordability is a problem where they live, according to a recent poll from the University of Houston and Texas Southern University.

Still, Hegar is the latest statewide official to signal unease about the state’s high housing costs. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan each have indicated that Texas lawmakers should tackle the state’s housing affordability challenges when they return to the Capitol next year.

More Texans are feeling the pressure from the state’s tight housing market. A recent report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that more Texas homeowners and renters than ever are struggling to keep a roof over their head.

Hegar’s report reflects a growing bipartisan policy consensus, bolstered by an expanding body of research, that the nation’s housing affordability woes stem from a shortage of homes. By various estimates, the U.S. needs millions more homes than it has.

Texas isn’t exempt from that shortage. The state builds more homes than other large states like New York and California. But it hasn’t built enough to keep up with demand spurred by the state’s growing economy and population. Higher land costs spurred by that demand have resulted in the construction of more expensive housing so builders can recoup the cost of the land.

Home prices rose faster in the 2010s than they did in the previous decade, the comptroller’s report said. That growth in home prices was only supercharged during the COVID-19 pandemic as the rise of remote work allowed workers from other states to relocate to Texas and what had been historically low interest rates fueled the homebuying market.

Texas didn’t build enough homes to keep up with population growth, particularly in its major metro areas, the comptroller’s report found. Nearly 225,000 people moved to Texas from other states between 2021 and 2022, a faster pace than in any year preceding the pandemic, the report said.

That led to depleted housing supply and higher prices as a result. Housing in Texas has reached its most unaffordable level since 1985, the comptroller’s office said Tuesday. There are few homes on the market that sell for prices that would be considered affordable for entry-level buyers.

The median sales price for a Texas home peaked at $340,000 in 2022 but has since hovered in that range, data from the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University show. Places like the Brownsville-Harlingen and Sherman-Denison areas saw dramatic spikes in home prices between 2019 and 2023 — 73% and 66%, respectively. The Austin-Round Rock region, where the run-up in home prices was most apparent, saw home prices peak above $500,000 in 2022, but those prices have since fallen.

Higher interest rates, initiated by the Federal Reserve in a bid to tame high inflation, have compounded the problem — raising the price of admission for first-time homebuyers and encouraging homeowners who otherwise would have sold their homes to hold onto their lower-interest rate mortgages, exacerbating the shortage. Relatively high property taxes and rising homeowners insurance have contributed to the woes.

The comptroller’s report stops short of making explicit recommendations on what steps policymakers should take, but nodded to some potential solutions.

Among them: relaxing local laws that determine what kinds of housing can be built and where. Cities have laws called zoning regulations that determine how many homes can be built on a given lot and how much land is required in order to build a home.

Those regulations, housing advocates and critics say, drive up housing costs in part because they restrict how many homes can ultimately be built. Most of the residential land in Texas’ major cities only allows single-family homes to be built and forbids other kinds of homes like duplexes, fourplexes and smaller apartment buildings from being constructed.

Proposals to relax city zoning restrictions to allow more housing have often faced opposition from existing homeowners and neighborhood groups, who steadfastly oppose any changes they see as altering the single-family character of their neighborhoods.

The comptroller’s report nodded to recent zoning reforms enacted by the Austin City Council, typically a left-leaning body, to allow up to three homes to be built where previously only one home could.

State lawmakers have shown an appetite for relaxing cities’ zoning restrictions even after proposals to do so failed at the Texas Legislature last year. Patrick and Phelan have each instructed lawmakers to study potential zoning reforms ahead of next year’s legislative session. Conservative thought-leaders like the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential think tank, support getting rid of residential zoning restrictions.

There are additional ways for local and state officials to tackle housing affordability, the comptroller’s office said. State lawmakers, for example, could fund programs or incentives aimed at providing homes for low- and moderate-income families. Local governments could streamline their permitting processes in order to allow homes to be built more quickly, the report said.

Nicole Nosek — who heads Texans for Reasonable Solutions, an organization that pushed zoning reforms at the state level last year — proposed ideas to increase housing supply during a Tuesday breakfast meeting with the comptroller’s office, Texas Habitat for Humanity and the Austin Board of Realtors.

It should be easier to build homes in commercial areas, Nosek said, which many Texas cities don’t currently allow. The amount of land cities require single-family homes to be built upon, a requirement known as a minimum lot size, should also be reduced, she said.

Houston reduced its minimum lot size to 1,400 square feet, first in the city center in 1998 before the reform expanded to the rest of the city in 2013. That reform has resulted in tens of thousands of new homes built on smaller lots, research shows, a boom that housing advocates argue has kept Houston’s housing costs in check — especially compared with other large U.S. cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City.

A bill to reduce cities’ minimum lot size requirements for single-family homes made it through the Texas Senate last year, but it died in the Texas House before it could come up for a vote.

Like California, Texas could find itself with exorbitant housing costs and residents fleeing to others states if it doesn’t figure out how to allow more homes to be built in its major urban areas, said Nosek, a California transplant herself.

“What you see in California, which is the ultimate cautionary tale, is when you don’t allow more supply to come online to accommodate the growth in population, you’re ultimately selecting who the losers are going to be,” Nosek said. “If you don’t have housing to accommodate all of the employees and all of the growth that we’re attracting, what’s going to happen is … the people on the lowest rung of the ladder and even the middle class get driven out to other states.”

Whether Democratic legislators get on board with those ideas remains an open question. House Democrats led the charge to kill a bill to relax city rules in order to effectively make it easier to build accessory dwelling units — also called “granny flats” or ADUs — in the backyards of single-family homes. Republicans in the state Legislature in recent years have often sought to prevent officials in the state’s bluer urban areas from enacting progressive policies, culminating in a sweeping bill last year that aimed to forbid cities from making laws on a number of fronts. Democrats thus have largely shown suspicion toward any measure that appeared to sap authority from the state’s bluer urban areas.

But there appears to be a movement among Democrats to embrace zoning reform at some level. The Texas Democratic Party adopted a platform this summer that includes support for rolling back local zoning regulations that get in the way of adding more homes.

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This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

AUSTIN (AP) — A Texas judge on Thursday shielded another migrant aid group from deeper questioning as part of a growing Republican-led investigation into organizations that help immigrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble ruled the aid group Team Brownsville was not required to take part in depositions related to the investigation. The ruling continues a string of court defeats for Texas officials who have put migrant aid groups under increasing scrutiny. The investigations were launched after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in 2022, without citing evidence, wrote a letter suggesting some groups may be acting unlawfully or helping migrants enter the U.S. illegally.

Gamble’s decision does not prevent the state from continuing an investigation into Team Brownsville, which state officials have accused of inappropriately using federal grant money. During a hearing in Austin, attorneys for Team Brownsville denied these accusations and accused Texas officials of trying to intimidate aid groups.

A judge rejected a similar motion for a deposition from Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in July, and a separate judge denied the state’s efforts to close a migrant shelter in El Paso.

Spokespersons for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office is leading the investigations, did not immediately respond to requests for comment after the hearing.

No criminal charges have been filed against any of the groups, and attorneys for Paxton’s office told Gamble they had no interest in pursuing a criminal investigation against Team Brownsville, which provides food and shelter to asylum seekers entering the U.S.

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Lathan is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

DALLAS (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to block a ban on firearms at the State Fair of Texas, one of the state’s biggest annual celebrations.

Fair organizers earlier this month announced a ban on guns after a shooting last year on the 277-acre (112-hectare) fairgrounds in the heart of Dallas. The move drew swift criticism from Republican state lawmakers, who have proudly expanded gun rights in recent years. Paxton, a Republican, threatened to sue if the ban was not repealed.

Paxton said Texas allows gun owners to carry firearms in places owned or leased by government entities unless otherwise prohibited by law. Fair Park is owned by the City of Dallas, which contracts with the State Fair of Texas for the management of the annual fair.

Paxton called the the ban an illegal restriction on gun owners’ rights. Texas allows people to carry a handgun without a license, background check or training.

“Neither the City of Dallas nor the State Fair of Texas can infringe on Texans’ right to self-defense,” Paxton said.

In a statement, the city government of Dallas said it is “aware of the lawsuit filed by the State of Texas and disagrees with the allegations against the City and interim city manager. The City was not involved in the State Fair of Texas’ announcement of its enhanced weapons policy. The State Fair of Texas is a private event operated and controlled by a private, non-profit entity and not the City.”

State fair officials did not immediately respond to email requests for comment.

The fair, which reopens in September and lasts for nearly a month, dates back to 1886. In addition to a maze of midway games, car shows and the Texas Star Ferris Wheel — one of the tallest in the U.S. — the fairgrounds are also home to the annual college football rivalry between the University of Texas and University of Oklahoma.