Home to 31 million residents spread out over 269 thousand square miles with 367 miles of diverse coastline, Texas is the second largest state in the country in both population and land area. Although many think of Texas as desert and prairie land, in reality the state is extremely diverse in its ecoregions. There are pine and oak woods in the east, marshes along the gulf coast, savannahs, prairies, and plains in the middle, hills in the western interior, and desert in the west.
CLIMATE IMPACTS
They say that everything is bigger in Texas, and the costs of climate change are no exception. Out of 300-billion-dollar climate change-exacerbated extreme weather events like storms, cyclones, flooding, droughts, wildfires, and winter storms affecting the United States between 1980-2021, Texas had 134 of them, more than any other state by far. This number jumped to 190 by 2025.
- How extreme are those storms? Already in May 2015, the amount of water that fell on Texas could have supplied the world’s drinking water for 27 years. And, as the extreme rainfall has become more frequent and severe, scientists are estimating an additional 2-3% increase by 2036. Some parts of Texas are more affected than others, with McAllen, Texas experiencing a 700% increase in heavy downpours since the 1950s and Houston seeing a 167% rise in heavy downpours since the 1950s.
- Urban flooding will continue to get worse as projections go as high as 15% more flooding than had occurred between 2000 and 2018.
- Sea level rise(18 inches since 1950!) is only accelerating the storm risk, the severity of coastal flooding, beach erosion, and the submerging of both wetlands and dry land.
- Hurricanes are a good-news-bad-news situation. On the one hand, the frequency of hurricanes is expected to level off or even decrease. On the other hand, their intensity is expected to skyrocket. Texas Climate News published an analysis on hurricanes in Texas in 2024 compared to 2008, and how their intensification has, or has not, influenced policy decisions.
- Although Texas has seen almost biblical-style storms, flooding and precipitation the state has simultaneously gotten drier and warmer, with the number of 100-degree days doubling over the past 40 years and estimated to double again by 2036.In fact, Texas’ future climate projections indicate drier summers and decreasing water supplies for the remainder of the 21st century.
- Besides hurting Texas’ people and ecosystems, climate change will also have devastating effects on the state’s economy, particularly agriculture. As the state gets drier, there will be less water for irrigation, leading to a reduction in the crops that Texas will be able to grow and sell. During the 2011 drought in Texas, for example, rice in Matagorda County shrunk from 22,000 acres to 2,100 acres in one year after authorities were forced to cut off the flow of irrigation water from the Colorado River. Statewide, that drought shaved $7.6 billion off the agriculture economy.
- Texas suffered profoundly in the winter of 2020/2021 with devastating blackouts as the freezing weather collapsed their grid. Up to 700 people died and millions of Texans were left without power for days on end. The whole event cost ratepayers $47 billion which customers will be paying off for decades.
- The Houston Chronicle published a list of expert solutions to fix the power grid in May, 2021. A study, released in July, 2021 summed up its recommendations with, “The next crisis may very well be crippling summer heat so preparing to avoid the next freeze won’t deal with the broader problem that our climate is changing and our infrastructure is designed for the 1960s, not the 2060s.”
- Another study, called Truth and Lies, released in August, took a serious look at the disinformation campaign which sought to lay the blame for the freeze on wind. It couldn’t be more fascinating.
ENERGY
Texas both consumes and produces more electricity and energy overall than any other U.S. state.
In 2025,
- Natural gas fueled more electricity generation in Texas than in any other state, accounting for between 41% and 44% and accounted for 15% of all U.S. natural gas-fired generation.
- Wind is the state’s second largest source of electricity, supplying 23% in 2025. Wind-powered electricity generation also produced nearly three tenths of the entire country’s wind-powered electricity, leading the U.S.for 17 consecutive years.
- Solar’s share of electricity supplied to the main Texas grid (ERCOT) climbed to 14%, officially surpassing coal as the third-largest power source. To combat solar generation drops at sunset, ERCOT pairs solar farms with 15 gigawatts of battery storage capacity.
- Texas officially became the number one statein the U.S. for both utility-scale solar capacity and actual solar generation.
- Coal produced 12% to 13%, down from 34% in 2013.
- Nuclear produced 7% to 8%of electricity.
CLEAN ENERGY GOALS
The Public Utility Commission of Texas has taken action, first adopting rules for the state’s renewable energy mandate in 1999 and amending them in 2005 to require that 5,880 megawatts, or about 5% of the state’s electricity generating capacity, come from renewable sources by 2015 and 10,000 megawatts of renewable capacity by 2025, including 500 megawatts from resources other than wind. Texas surpassed their 2025 goal already in 2009, predominantly because of the generating capacity provided by the state’s wind farms. Their 150+ wind farms make them the #1 renewable energy generator in the country. By the end of 2023, Texas had over 57,000 megawatts of renewable generating capacity.
SOME FIERCE OPPOSITION
- The Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit based in Austin and backed by oil and gas companies, has run a series of influence campaigns to stall the transition to renewable energy not just in Texas but across the country. The foundation has campaigned to shut down offshore wind projects in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York, supported fracking in Colorado, kept open a coal-fired power plant in Arizona, and launched a disinformation campaign to claim that the Texas winter blackout was caused by unreliable wind energy.
LEGISLATION
Texas has not developed an independent statewide climate plan.
- The 2023 legislative session is representative of the lack of climate action in the state. The bills that failed to pass the legislative session included energy efficiency proposals, a bill to create a Texas Energy Efficiency Council, and an environmental justice proposal. Meanwhile, the legislature passed laws that eliminated incentives for renewables and blocked cities from trying to reduce GHG emissions. As Environment Texas Director Luke Metzer said, “The climate is worse off for the Legislature having met.”
- However, four of the five largest cities have adopted climate action plans, including Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and there is, as of 2017, a coastal resiliency plan. Regional plans focus on a variety of climate issues, ranging from fuel efficiency to the protection of local ecosystems and climate justice.
CLIMATE ACTION WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Texas developed its first climate plan under the EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction grants program, submitting a Priority Climate Action Plan in March 2024. Six metropolitan areas in Texas also received grants under the program to develop their own plans, including Austin, Dallas and Houston.
