“We can have Texas pride based on our football and barbecue. It doesn’t have to be based on us having blackouts in an isolated grid,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) told The Hill. 

Casar is co-sponsor of the Connect the Grid Act, which has drawn together the bulk of Texas House Democrats and progressive figures like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Pramila Jaypal (D-Wash.). 

The bill — which Casar was promoting in Austin on Wednesday alongside civil society and union groups — has two main components. 

First, it would definitively state that Texas’s grid is under federal supervision — a jurisdiction the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) says it currently doesn’t have. 

Second, it would direct FERC to oversee a massive process of building transmission lines to connect surrounding power markets to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), as the state grid is known. 

The need to connect the Texas grid to the national one is “particularly acute,” according to an October 2023 report from the Department of Energy. 

Linking the Texas grid to the national network would save the state $4 billion on average each year — and around $27 billion in the case of extreme weather, according to a report from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. 

The UT report found that power would be particularly useful in a case like 2021’s Winter Storm Uri, which killed hundreds and cost the state $100 billion. 

“You want a grid that is bigger than the weather,” UT engineering professor Michael Webber told an Austin public radio station. 

“Even if it’s just a few thousand megawatts of transmission capacity, that can make a difference.” 

The UT report found that the nation needs about 55 more gigawatts of power to weather the winter storms of the 2030s if the grids aren’t bridged. 

That’s just 2 percent more than if they aren’t connected — which would avoid building the power equivalent of 25 of California’s controversial Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors. 

However, the bill will need to garner a lot of Republican support — which is an uphill battle.  

The proposal “would be fine if it was cheaper than building new power plants here,” said Brent Bennett, who runs the energy practice at the conservative advocacy group Texas Public Policy Foundation. 

“But transmission is hard to build and expensive,” Bennett told The Hill. “We have solar, wind and gas here — we don’t need to build other transmission lines.” 

Bennett argued that despite the messaging around reliability, the economic benefits of connecting the grid would stem from the ability of Texas producers to “export wind and solar.”  

That’s a point Casar agrees with, at least in part: The prospect of exporting Texas wind and solar power is a significant part of the appeal — and key to his hopes of winning over rural Republican lawmakers. 

“The economic benefits of this bill would flow to all Texas consumers, but they would overwhelmingly flow to rural Texas — because there is a lot of pent-up electric demand across the country for wind and solar,” Casar said. 

“We have lots of sunny and windy days in rural Texas, which is ready to become part of the clean energy economy. But right now, they can only sell inside of the state of Texas,” he added. 

Welcome to The Hill’s Sustainability newsletter , we’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin — every week we follow the latest moves in the growing battle over sustainability in the U.S. and around the world.

Nearly 300 international activist groups are pressing European Union and Group of Seven (G7) leaders to strengthen existing sanctions on Russian oil and gas.  

Firming up the G7’s grasp: The groups — predominantly environment and human rights organizations — called upon countries to “tighten their grip on Russia’s key revenue streams.” 

They outlined their demands in a letter sent on Wednesday to the leaders of the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K., and the European Commission, Council and Parliament.  

Emptying a “war chest”: Restricting these “revenue streams,” per the authors, would involve banning Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports and closing the loopholes that plague existing sanctions.  

“More must be done to stop purchasing fuels that finance the Kremlin’s war chest,” the writers stated.  

What sanctions are active today? The EU and the U.K. banned maritime imports of Russian crude in December 2022 — a move that a Helsinki-based think tank described as “the biggest step to date to cut off the fossil fuel export revenue.”  

• The think tank, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, stressed that such revenue has enabled “Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine.”
• A ban on imports of refined petroleum products took effect in February 2023. 

Then came a price cap: In parallel with the EU and U.K. bans in December 2022, an international coalition of countries also agreed to what’s known as a “price cap.” 

• The coalition restricted the seaborne transport of crude oil and petroleum products unless these items were bought or sold below a specific price threshold.
• Among the members of the coalition are the U.S., the EU, Australia and G7 nations: the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K.
• The price cap serves “to maintain a reliable supply” of oil in the global market while reducing Russian profits, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.  

Cracking down on violations: The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in October 2023 implemented further sanctions against vessels that carried Russian crude priced above the agreed-upon cap.  

This additional action, the Treasury stated at the time, served to decrease Moscow’s oil profits while “constraining the Russian war machine.” 

Increase surveillance, decrease the price cap : The Tuesday signatories, led by the Ukrainian group Razom We Stand, stressed that action to-date has proved insufficient.  

• The writers acknowledged that Russian export earnings have dropped by 14 percent — costing Moscow about $37 billion.
• But they also stressed that EU and G7 nations have spent $218 billion on Russian fossil fuels since the invasion began.  

Shedding light on shadows: The activists also called upon world leaders to prevent Russia from expanding its “shadow fleet” of uninsured and unaccountable tankers.  

• The eradication of these fleets would help “prevent looming environmental catastrophes from possible major oil spills,” the letter stated.
• Such action could be accomplished by introducing a spill insurance verification program for vessels that travel through EU or G7 waters.  

Sealing a loophole: Also critical to the writers is the closure of what they characterized as the “refining loophole.” 

This trade ambiguity has enabled EU and G7 countries to import diesel, jet fuel and gasoline refined from Russian crude in third-party nations.  

Independence, resilience : Taking such dramatic steps is “about dismantling the foundation that enables autocracy to thrive,” the signatories stressed.  

“It’s a global imperative to foster energy independence, peace, climate action and democratic resilience,” they added.