Texas is adding solar at a faster pace than any other state. Solar and storage are powering Texas’ manufacturing renaissance, creating jobs, and lowering customers’ bills; even the state’s oil and gas sector is an eager consumer of solar power.

And renewables are also pumping tens of billions of dollars into local — mostly rural — economies in the form of landowner payments and tax payments.

We’re on track to add another 8-10 gigawatts in 2025, after adding about that much in 2024.

In this week’s episode, I sat down with Sean Gallagher, Senior Vice President of Policy at the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), and Daniel Giese, SEIA’s Director of State Affairs for Texas. We unpack the forces behind this record-breaking growth and what could help keep it going — as well as what could stop it in its tracks.

The federal budget bill would cripple the boom.

Texas is seeing historic levels of investment, in large part because of the 10-year certainty provided by the IRA. These tax credits are bringing down capital costs, reducing risk, enabling longer-term project planning, and driving investments in solar manufacturing.

As Sean points out, this policy clarity has helped drive a wave of new solar and battery projects. And Texas is leading the pack, thanks to our land availability, pro-development bent, and robust demand growth.

But the same projects that are thriving today could be lost tomorrow if federal tax policy changes too abruptly.

Policy risk is rising. And it’s already hurting deployment.

Federal tariffs. Delays in domestic manufacturing. A growing push in some counties to ban solar outright. It’s all adding up. SEIA recently reported that more than 5 GW of solar capacity in Texas was delayed or canceled just this spring due to trade policy and market uncertainty.

Add in the threat of repealing or rolling back the IRA, and the fragility of this moment becomes clear. Developers aren’t panicking, but they are cautious. And that’s enough to slow the pace of deployment at exactly the wrong time.

Storage is the backbone of reliability and we’re just getting started.

Storage is no longer a “nice-to-have.” It’s essential. It’s one of the main reasons ERCOT’s summer grid outlook improved from a 12% chance of outages in 2023 to less than 1% this year.

Daniel and Sean both emphasized how solar + storage is becoming the new standard and how distributed storage, especially, can help strengthen resilience while reducing strain on transmission.

If Texas wants to keep growing solar and maintain reliability, batteries aren’t optional. They’re the glue that binds the new grid together.

Final thoughts

The clean energy transition is already underway, but the friction between policy and politics on the one hand and markets and technology on the other, is starting to slow it down.

Texas has the fundamentals to lead the next chapter of America’s energy story: land, load, labor, and sun. But the national and state-level decisions we make in the next two years about policy, infrastructure, and transparency will determine whether we keep that lead or fall behind.

This conversation with SEIA was timely given all the activity in Austin and Washington DC. Timestamps and relevent links are below.

This was a free episode but your contributions support this podcast and the newsletter. If you’re already a subscriber, thank you! If you’re not yet a subscriber, please become one today and please recommend the pod to friends, family, and colleagues.

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Timestamps

* 00:00 – Introduction

* 02:00 – Breaking down the recent Texas legislative session

* 03:30 – Rural benefits of renewables, why some legislators vote against their districts

* 07:00 – How Texas rates nationally on solar & storage

* 8:30 – Solar’s meteoric rise in Texas

* 11:00 – Good bills that passed in the recent legislative session

* 13:30 – How industry supported bills addressing recycling, consumer protection

* 15:45 – The federal budget bill and its potential impact on manufacturing

* 18:00 – Data center and AI companies’ support for renewable energy

* 20:00 – Without solar & storage, the economy will slow

* 23:00 – Winning the competition w/ China for electricity supply chain dominance

* 27:30 – The three incentives that support domestic manufacturing

* 29:30 – The impacts of the budget bill on Texas

* 34:00 – Grid operators and regulators say we need continued solar development

* 37:00 – Where will tax credits go from here

* 39:00 – Problems with the budget bill: abrupt end of tax credits instead of ramp and Foreign Entities of Concern (FEOC)

* 44:00 – Prospects for residential solar / distributed generation in Texas

* 46:00 – Initiatives SEIA will be engaged with at the PUC

* 48:00 – Support for solar power and SEIA’s call to action & how to get involved

Resources

Get Involved: Solar Powers America

SEIA Resources

* Solar and Storage Industry Statement on Proposed U.S. Senate Finance Committee Reconciliation Text

* Hundreds of American Solar Workers and Advocates Rally on Capitol Hill With a Message to Congress: “Don’t Kill Our Jobs”

* REPORT: U.S. Adds 8.6 GW of New Solar Module Manufacturing Capacity, One of its Strongest Quarters of Growth in U.S. History

* Solar Market Insight Report Q2 2025

Other Podcasts, Articles, Websites Mentioned

* Pakistan’s Solar Boom. Volts.

* Energy Submission. Texas Energy & Power Newsletter

* Impact of Limiting Solar and Wind Development in the ERCOT Market. Aurora Energy Research

* CPS boss says taking away renewable tax breaks will just shift the costs. San Antonio Express News.

* Gridstatus.io

Transcript

Doug Lewin (00:05 .816)

Solar was under attack in the Texas legislative session that recently ended. Now it's under attack in Congress. Why is this happening for resource that has delivered so much benefit? We dive into that in this episode of the Energy Capital Podcast. I'm your host, Doug Lewin, and this week I was joined by not one but two guests, Sean Gallagher, Senior Vice President of Policy for the Solar Energy Industries Association, and Daniel Giese, Texas State Director for SIA. A quick note, we recorded this pod last

Doug Lewin (00:35 .436)

week before the Senate version of the reconciliation bill, the budget bill was released. So we got into what happened in the House bill. We talked a whole lot about what happened during the Texas legislative session. We talked about the meteoric rise of solar and what that has meant for the state of Texas. We got into all kinds of things, but not the Senate version of the bill. We will put in the show notes. You will be able to find there, a statement on the Senate bill, but we will not discuss it in this episode.

Doug Lewin (01:04 .728)

This was a great episode. Really enjoyed talking with Sean and Daniel. think you're going to learn a lot from this. As always, please become a subscriber to the Energy Capital podcast and the Texas Energy and Power newsletter at douglouen.com. Please leave a five star review wherever you listen and please enjoy the show. Thanks for listening.

Doug Lewin (01:27 .608)

Sean Gallagher and Daniel Giese. Welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast.

Daniel Giese (01:31 .256)

Thank you Doug. Good to be here.

Sean Gallagher (01:32 .76)

here.

Sean Gallagher (01:33 .175)

Thanks for having us.

Doug Lewin (01:34 .872)

You guys are doing great work at SIA on behalf of the solar industry. And obviously it is a fascinating time, too fascinating in my view, what's going on in the solar industry. Let us st