As the economic impact of the Iran War is increasingly felt across the globe, Texans are urged to remember lessons learned over more than two decades.

“Energy security is inseparable from energy diversity,” said Dr. Mike Slattery, research director at Texas Christian University’s Ralph Lowe Energy Institute. “They go hand-in-hand.”

Diverse sources can also serve as a buffer against energy supply and price shocks, he noted. That is a lesson Texas has learned better than most other states, he told the Reporter-Telegram in a phone interview.

He cited an example from last year, when wind power supplied a large share of electricity on the Texas grid during periods of record-breaking demand. Not once did grid operators issue an emergency conservation alert. That outcome was not an accident. It was the product of more than two decades of policy decisions, private investment and infrastructure development that most Americans know little about.

The rise of wind energy in Texas did not emerge from environmental activism. It began in 1999, when Gov. George W. Bush signed legislation creating one of the nation’s first renewable portfolio standards.

A decade later, Gov. Rick Perry championed the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones transmission project, a network of high-voltage lines completed in 2013 that connected the windy plains of West Texas to the state’s major population centers. Private capital followed. Landowners on ranches already supporting cattle and crops signed turbine leases. Markets did the rest.

Today, Texas produces more wind electricity than any other state. Wind supplies roughly a third of ERCOT grid electricity at certain times of year, and generation has risen more than 20 percent since 2021. This happened because the economics worked, not because Washington required it.

It is unfortunate the current administration seems to be anti-renewable energy and anti-wind turbines, Slattery said, because that opposition is not based on the reality and economics on the ground.

Critics also cite Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 when there were widespread outages across the state. Critics point to the failure of wind turbines and solar panels, but Slattery said all energy sources underperformed during the storm.

The Texas model of diverse energy sources was not necessarily explicitly planned but was a combination of geography, an infrastructure foundation and policies, Slattery said. The Permian Basin, with its fossil fuel resources, created the infrastructure, workforce and institutional capacity for large-scale energy development. Wind and solar built on that foundation.

Slattery concluded that Texas sees energy as a competitive market, favoring sources that can quickly and reliably add capacity to a growing grid. Understanding those lessons will help states — and nations now rationing energy or releasing stockpiles — as they face these challenges.