Wired for Change with Congressman Greg Casar

In this episode of the Energy Capital Podcast, I spoke with Congressman Greg Casar about some of the most pressing challenges and opportunities facing Texas’ energy system. From addressing worker protections during extreme weather to rethinking Texas’ grid structure, our conversation explored a range of ideas championed by the Congressman, including

* The Connect the Grid Act: Casar introduced the bill on the three year anniversary of Winter Storm Uri. The bill aims to improve grid reliability by interconnecting ERCOT with the national grid. We explored the positives and negatives of that proposal, including a recent MIT study that found the bill would reduce outages by 40-80% in a system similar to Winter Storm Uri, assuming comparable power plant failures— depending on how many transmission lines are built to interconnect ERCOT. Casar also highlighted the economic benefits, including new revenue opportunities for Texas through clean energy exports. And I asked him about the potential downsides including a lot more regulations before Texas builds more infrastructure.

* Balancing permitting reform with consumer protection: While Casar supports streamlined permitting to speed up transmission and clean energy projects, he also emphasized the importance of keeping key consumer protections in place.

* Protecting workers in extreme heat: With heat the leading cause of climate-related deaths, Casar discussed the need for federal heat safety standards to protect outdoor workers, including those in construction and delivery services. He pointed to recent preventable deaths as evidence of why this issue demands immediate attention.

* Opportunities for workers in the energy transition: Casar also focused on the challenges facing oil and gas workers during the energy transition. Through his American Energy Worker Opportunity Act, he hopes to provide a clear path for fossil fuel workers to transition into high-paying clean energy jobs without sacrificing pay or benefits. This approach prioritizes stability for workers while supporting long-term economic growth. We talked about how, even though Texas is producing more oil and gas than ever before, there are 100,000 fewer oil and gas workers in Texas today than in 2014.

This episode and the many I’ve recorded with Republicans, including the one last month with Governor Rick Perry, isn’t about picking sides — it’s about being more curious than judgemental. I hope you’ll listen regardless of your political leanings, and I hope you’ll find this discussion as interesting and thought-provoking as I did.

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Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction to Congressman Greg Casar

06:29 - The Climate Crisis: A Personal and Political Perspective

12:51 - The Connect the Grid Act: Addressing Energy Reliability

19:28 - Interconnections and the Future of Texas Energy

25:37 - Bipartisan Opportunities in the Energy Economy

33:50 - Worker Protections in a Changing Climate

39:11 - Transitioning Fossil Fuel Workers to Clean Energy Jobs

Shownotes:

Grid Interconnections and Reliability

* The Connect the Grid Act – Congressman Casar’s proposal to interconnect ERCOT with the national grid, reducing outages and enabling clean energy exports.

* MIT Study on Grid Interconnections – Research demonstrating how linking Texas to neighboring grids could have prevented up to 80% of power outages during Winter Storm Uri.

* Southern Spirit Transmission Project (Pattern Energy) – Transmission line connecting Texas to the Eastern Interconnect.

* Grid United El Paso Project – Connecting ERCOT to the Western Interconnect to expand energy sharing and improve grid flexibility.

* The Southern Spirit transmission line could connect Texas grid to the southeast. Will it ever happen?

Clean Energy Investments and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)

* Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Overview – The largest federal clean energy investment package in U.S. history.

* 45X Advanced Manufacturing Tax Credit – Providing incentives for clean energy manufacturing, including solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries.

* Clean Energy Investments Dashboard (E2) – Tracks jobs and investments related to clean energy projects spurred by the IRA.

* Texas Enterprise Fund – State program that Casar highlighted as a model for attracting clean energy manufacturing.

* DOE Loan Programs Office – Supporting financing for large-scale clean energy and grid-related projects.

Worker Protections and Climate Safety

* American Energy Worker Opportunity Act – Casar’s initiative to transition fossil fuel workers into union-backed clean energy jobs.

* Federal Heat Safety Standards – Proposed by the Biden administration to protect workers from extreme heat exposure.

* Workers Defense Project – Advocating for better working conditions and stronger labor protections for Texas construction and energy workers.

* Texas Observer Article: Heat Deaths and Worker Protections – Coverage of heat-related worker deaths and the ongoing push for heat safety regulations.

Energy Transition and Technology

* Texas Geothermal Energy Alliance – Mentioned as a potential growth area for transitioning oil and gas workers due to transferable skills.

* NuScale Power – Casar briefly mentions nuclear energy, including advanced technologies like Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), as part of the future energy mix.

* Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy – Supporting nuclear innovation and new projects.

* U.S. Climate Alliance – Texas is not currently a member, but Casar highlighted federal initiatives for state collaboration on climate resilience.

Key Quotes:

* “We’re no longer talking about preserving the planet for future generations—we’re talking about saving lives and livelihoods today.” – Greg Casar

* “The Connect the Grid Act isn’t about taking control away from Texas. It’s about making sure the lights stay on and Texans don’t suffer through another Winter Storm Uri.” – Greg Casar

* “We need to support oil and gas workers as they transition into new roles. They powered this country for decades, and they deserve stability and good jobs in the clean energy economy.” – Greg Casar

* "We’re not asking Texas to give up its independence. What we’re asking for is smart interconnections that allow us to export clean energy and prevent major grid failures." – Greg Casar

* "The Inflation Reduction Act isn’t just about solar panels—it’s about creating stable, well-paying jobs in manufacturing, geothermal, and other industries that can benefit everyone, including oil and gas workers." – Greg Casar

Transcript

Doug Lewin

Congressman Greg Casar, welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast.

Congressman Greg Casar

Thanks so much for having me.

Doug Lewin

So you obviously made a big splash when you introduced the Connect the Grid Act just about a year ago on the anniversary of Winter Storm Uri. And I do want to talk to you about that. But before we go there, I'd like to just get a sense of your vision for energy, dealing with climate change, anything related to those issues, both as an individual, but also obviously as the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Doug Lewin

We're recording nine days into the Trump administration. It's a really fascinating time to be chair of the progressive caucus. So just want to get a sense of, of, your vision and the caucus's vision, for energy and for climate action.

Congressman Greg Casar

Well, tragically, climate issues are now front and center in our daily lives. We're no longer talking, as we may have a decade or two ago, about preserving our planet for our grandchildren. We're talking about helping protect your life today. We're no longer talking about how this may cost us money in the future if we don't invest in clean energy.

You're fueling the climate crisis in your mailbox right now as home insurance rates shoot up. If you're in places like Florida and increasingly in Texas, there's entire home insurers ditching the state. so even though I'm a relatively young elected official, I remember when I was first campaigning for office 10 years ago, we were talking about the looming climate crisis or the threat of climate change. But now I think progressives are pivoting. To make this no longer just a progressive theoretical issue in the future, but instead a bread and butter daily issue for voters right now. I wish we weren't in that place where the climate crisis was already hitting us so hard, but now that it is, we should be talking about this as an issue that affects voters of all political stripes and all political backgrounds.

Because when I knock on a door now, people do talk about Winter Storm Uri and how that hurt them and their families. They recognize that the cost of rebuilding Los Angeles after these wildfires could wind up, I think, being greater than the entire cost of the entire Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate investment in our nation's history. So that's where I think things stand right now, is that this is a bread and butter issue for working people. We've got to make this, we've got to take on energy issues, both for our safety and for just not just our prosperity, just to make sure that things don't end up costing a huge amount.

Doug Lewin

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it definitely seems like with each passing year, as these various climate fueled events continue to add up, it seems like we would pass some kind of a tipping point where things would really change. And yet it doesn't. I you talk about 10 years ago, I remember 20 years ago with Hurricane Katrina and thinking, this will definitely be a point where things will change and it doesn't necessarily change. Let's get into a little bit more of, where you think change should happen. you introduced, as I just mentioned, the Connect the Grid Act. Can you describe for the listeners what that would do and why you think it's so important?

Congressman Greg Casar

Winter Storm Uri, I think, changed everything as it relates to energy and the grid here in Texas because it just hit everyone so hard, except critically. Almost all of us here in Texas have family or friends or people we know in places like El Paso or places like Beaumont that are on the edges of the state that were interconnected to other parts of the country. And so I was in touch with my family and friends and places all over Texas to check in on them and we clearly saw that those who are interconnected to other parts of the state did not have the huge, massive power outages demanded by ERCOT that the rest of us did. And suddenly, people like governor Abbott going and blaming wind power or whatever, just felt that those excuses suddenly fell completely flat. Before the idea of Texas's independence from the rest of the country maybe sounded cool, but it didn't serve us well in our immediate needs. And so when I got to Congress, I thought I would co-sign onto whichever bill there was that said that Texas's grid should be internet connected to the national grid. And I found no such bill. In fact, all of the big grid legislation championed by both sides of the aisle, all of the transmission legislation basically always had an exception for Texas, always said, all of the supplies everywhere except for ERCOT. Everybody just decided to leave a big Texas-sized hole, donut hole, in the middle of the country. And that's just not going to work. I mean, if we're supposed to be the energy capital of the country, how is it, one, that the lights can go off and people keep on tracking to see if the lights will go off? And two, how are we going to serve this entire country's electric needs as our needs for electricity continues to grow if we think about transmission, just cut Texas out as a Texas-shaped hole every time. So we filed the Connect the Grid Act because the federal government does guarantee electric reliability basically as a right in this country. And what we don't do is say that there needs to be a certain amount of transmission connectivity in order to achieve that goal.

But in Texas, I believe that because of the lack of interconnectivity, we aren't achieving the level of reliability guaranteed in the United States. And therefore, we want to set a reliability standard and require a certain amount of transmission to be able to go in and out of the state in a certain level of connectivity. so that if the Great Act passed, essentially that would require this level of connection to start being built out between Texas and its neighboring National Grids.

Doug Lewin

So I want to talk about both the positives and the negatives of that, the upsides and the downsides and get your thoughts. So on the upside, on the positive side, there was a study that MIT put out over the summer, and we will link to that in the show notes, that showed that if we...

Congressman Greg Casar

I've never gotten a call from MIT saying, hey, we're going to study your bill and see if it does what it says it's going to do. We all crossed our fingers. like, well, we sure hope this works.

Doug Lewin

If they came back and said, sorry, Congressman, your bill is crap. It would have been a bad day, but they did not do that. They actually said what they did was really interesting. They took a thousand different simulations of a Winter Storm Uri type of event. just to get this out of the way, because I hear this all the time, people are like, oh, that could never happen again. It could happen again. It happened in the 1980s. It was 1989. There was a very similar system. it was not a one in a million. It's actually two within 40 years. There's nothing to think we couldn't get another one. it might nothing to think it might not even be worse. But they took a Winter Storm Uri situation modeled the same number of outages that we had during Uri like 50 % of the natural gas plants are offline, 40 % of wind, 43 % of coal, etc. And then looked at if there were interconnections as laid out in the Connect the Grid Act, and you have a range in the bill. And so they said the range of reductions and outages would be between 40 and 80%. It might've been like 43 and 79 or something like that. But basically between 40 and 80 % less outages. One thing I don't think they actually got into in that study was what's called Black Start, had we lost the whole grid. We would have actually been able to get back up quicker if we had more interconnections. It's harder to bring the grid back up if you're only sort of, indeed, indeed. But if you did, if you ended up in that situation, more interconnections would make it easier. So those are two of the big upsides. Do you want to say any more about those or add any other positives that you see if we went down that road?

Congressman Greg Casar

Sure would be great good to just not lose the whole grid. You one, you would, of course, save a bunch of money if you don't have the mass outages. mean, there was there's calculations that you had over $100 billion in damages, economic damage, just from the ERCOT outages we had during Winter Storm Uri alone. So there's a real economic savings in the disaster moments. But what isn't talked about as much is also the economic output for the state of Texas when other people are in disaster moments. Because part of the idea of the United States of America is that people help us out when we're in trouble and we help other people out when they're in trouble. And Texas, of course, has a lot of land available for energy development. And there are plenty of states around us that if they have a giant storm cloud on over them or they have a massive economic development project they want to engage in. Rhat we might be able to export and sell energy from Texas. And the MIT study shows that there would be likely over $100 million in revenue yearly back into ERCOT to be able to lower our own energy prices or be able to strengthen our own grid. Because sometimes, or oftentimes, the sun is shining and the wind is blowing and workers are at work in Texas, and there might be trouble in Oklahoma or in New Mexico or in Louisiana.

Doug Lewin

Yeah, or even more to the point, like on the East Coast or the West Coast, right? Because there's the saying, the wind is always blowing, the sun's always shining somewhere, right? So if you have the more interconnections you have, the more ability you have to move that power.

Congressman Greg Casar

And of course, we want to address the increased energy need across the country as we electrify things more and more, not just for climate reasons, but also because we know that it's more effective and cheaper, then it's better for the whole country. Now, I know we're primarily talking to a Texas audience here, but part of how we get the U.S. Congress on board is that it's much better for the entire country for us to be able to move electricity all across the country. As our electricity demand continues to increase, an increased electrical production, increased electrical use and transmission makes us competitive around the world.

Doug Lewin

Yeah. And it is kind of weird when you think about it, just in the sense that we're, you know, Texas has been an energy exporting state forever, but that's not forever for a hundred years, right? But that's plus spindle top, right? 120 years. So, but that's oil and gas. And for some reason we, we don't export, energy to power, I should say. Yeah.

Congressman Greg Casar

Yeah, that's weird, Doug. Everybody feels like we want to set up export terminals for liquid natural gas but don't want to electric molecules from and sell them between here and Louisiana.

Doug Lewin

So I do want to get your thoughts about this though, because I think there is a potential sort of like a different path, which would be additional interconnections between ERCOT and the East and the West without a full interconnection, which still would achieve that aim. So there's a couple of projects. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, but one is by Pattern Energy. call it Southern Spirit, I think is what it's called. It's like from. West Texas, Houston Chronicle had a great series on this. We'll put a, we'll put a link to that in the show notes too. From West Texas into the Eastern interconnect. Uh, there's a project that, uh, grid United, Michael Skelly and his group, uh, are working on that would connect. Um, it's actually within the state. It's kind of a really interesting one, but it's from within ERCOT into El Paso, but thus would connect to the Western interconnect. And with those, you could export the power. Then if there's an emergency, you turn around the flow and bring power in. But you wouldn't have the full interconnection, which then would have Texas under FERC jurisdiction, which like heading into a, you know, four years or just the very beginning of four years of the Trump administration, like I would think, you know, that you might see that there's be some benefit of not having Texas under FERC jurisdiction. ERCOT has this slide they put out all the time that shows if you have to go through the FERC process to build transmission takes 10 to 12 years in Texas, we can usually get it done in five to six.

So there are advantages to not being interconnected. And I'm just wondering if you've thought about maybe like this different path of having these additional interconnections without the full interconnection.

Congressman Greg Casar

Look, I'm a supporter of the Southern Spirit line, a supporter of interconnections between the state. You know, even if you had Southern Spirit at its at sort of its largest end of transmission, you would need multiple times that if you really wanted to deal with the problem. And I'd say go ahead and build multiple times of those. I think one of the challenges that you see and you can it's not hard to read between the lines on this, even if you're not fully plugged in and just reading the media reports on it is that they're having to continue to maneuver to make these connections smaller or kind of more smart and interesting like you just described within the states, but going into El Paso in order to try to avoid the question of, well, how do we deal with federal regulation? And some of those federal regulations, I'd be fine with figuring out how to streamline them and accelerate things. Some of them are there to protect the consumer. And I'm always skeptical of maligning the entire process when sometimes some of it's really there to take care of you and me against somebody that wants to take advantage of us and make a bunch of money on it. And so I do think that there is a real benefit of those interconnections. But I also believe that if we just. Bit the bullet and just said, look, we're part of the United States of America. We should stop trying to use all of these loopholes to not be a part of the United States of America. Once we get over and just figure out what parts of the FERC process we want to improve, I think a ton of these interconnections would quickly get built because the market demand is there. I don't think anybody thinks that it's in our economic interest or safety interest not to have these interconnections and everybody just keeps dancing around the FERC question. So I'm fine for people to keep dancing the best they can and build out those interconnections.

But I think that we get there way quicker and way faster if we just do the right thing rather than continue to dance around it because we don't want something to maybe cost us a couple of years here or there, but it ends up costing us 20 years of dancing. I that makes sense. some of the things that slow down transmission projects and generation projects in other states don't apply in Texas. And that has to do partly with how we've structured our grid, which we would still have a lot of say over even under FERC.

Also Some of those studies that I've looked at don't always take into account how other states deal with zoning and planning and permitting on their own. So I wouldn't lay, of course, I don't have the slideshow in front of me that you're talking about, but just in general, when somebody says to me, hey, if suddenly we're under FERC, Texas is going to go from six years to 12 years on transmission. I take that with a full salt shaker of salt.

And, you know, as a former city council member that has been a big advocate for a lot more housing supply and on the board of Austin Energy or Public Electric Utility here being a big advocate of a lot more energy supply, I am deeply sympathetic to people that say there's stuff in permitting processes that we don't need to have and also deeply knowledgeable about there being corporate shills that want to say something is wrong with the permitting process. That's actually the main thing we want in our permitting process. We want plants to be safe. We want transmission lines to work and be smart and not be duplicative. But then we also need to make sure we plow through sort of NIMBYISM and concern trolling and needless red tape. Both of those can exist. And I think that you know, this old way of thinking of you're either team more permitting or team less permitting is just, you know, not the right way of thinking about it when you're talking about energy, just like when you're talking about housing.

Doug Lewin

Yeah, totally. And this is actually one of the things I most love about doing this podcast is to be able to go kind of a few levels deeper than just what kind of appears on the surface and really kind of understand where people are coming from. Because, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people would assume different things about different members of Congress based on what letters after their name on what they would think of permitting reform. it's the truth is actually much more complicated. Speaking of areas where there might be things that are not intuitive based on the letter after somebody's name. I do want to talk to you about these early days of the Trump administration and particularly where the Inflation Reduction Act is headed, what is kind of the future of some of the spending. We're recording on January 29th. Just yesterday the administration gave a directive and

Congressman Greg Casar

You're recording in the post-constitutional world,

Doug Lewin

Well, we'll, we'll see. We'll see where this goes in the courts. Yeah. It's a pretty wild thing, right? For the executive branch to say an act of Congress, and the previous administration with contracts signed that those contracts wouldn't be honored, which is what it looks like they're saying. We'll see how all this shakes out. what, what I want to, I, I'd be interested in your thoughts on that for sure. I also though want to kind of, I want to understand, I mean, you've been in Congress for a while. You've worked there for a while. You've seen kind of where different members come out on this stuff. I'm really interested in the areas of the Inflation Reduction Act, for instance, like 45X, which is the provision that is for manufacturing incentives. And we're seeing a lot of manufacturing come into states like Georgia and South Carolina and Tennessee and Texas. And I think if the administration just halts all of that funding as it appears they want to do and all of those tax credits, there's probably going to be a lot of Republican members of Congress and Republican governors that are pretty upset at that. Where do you think there might actually be bipartisan areas to kind of work together on the energy economy, the clean energy economy, however you want to talk about it over these next four years?

Congressman Greg Casar

I do want folks to have this in context of where we are right now. It was just yesterday that it became clear the Trump administration froze or said they were going to freeze basically all federal funds that flowed through states and municipalities and grants, which everybody rightfully freaked out about. I mean, there are nine states that receive over 45 % of their overall state budget in the form of federal funding and federal grants, all nine of them. In fact, being Republican controlled states from Wyoming to South Dakota to most prominently Louisiana, where the Speaker of the House and the House Majority Leader are both from. Medicaid portals got shut down because so much of Medicaid is administered through the state. And then the Trump administration said, sorry, that was a glitch, website glitch. They're back on. You know, a court then quickly halted the order based on multiple Supreme Court precedents that have existed, including a unanimous one. And so that's where we are. What I hope and expect, but don't know, you if somebody's listening to this podcast a month or two from now, what will happen.

I hope and expect that we are not really in a post-constitutional order, like I joked about here earlier, and that courts make it very clear. That when Congress has passed a law and appropriated dollars, that those dollars are then sent out. Because if we wind up, I do want to spend more of my time assuming that that is what happens, but if we wind up in a world where that isn't held up, will become a whole new world about how budgets and laws are passed in the United States of America. Because how could you have a bipartisan law where I say, okay, I'm happy to fund this program and this Republican state, but we do need money for these hungry children in this democratic city or what have you, or we need disaster funds. We're going to vote for this bill that I may not love, but it has funding to rebuild North Carolina and California. And then what happens if President Trump just gets to say, well, I just not going to rebuild California, even though that got passed into law. I mean, how could Congress operate? How can a budget ever get passed? How can we do almost anything if the president can just say take back seas. I it's just totally nuts. And so my hope is we don't wind up in that world because if you wind up in that world, I just don't know how to tell what nobody will be able to tell you how this is going to work anymore.

Doug Lewin

I mean, at some point the Supreme Court's gonna have to make that decision, right? I mean, at some point this has got to be headed to the Supreme Court and they're either gonna weigh in or not weigh in, but by not weighing in, they will have affirmed the lower court. At some point the Supreme Court's gonna have to say whether or not a president just has absolute power to void contracts. I mean, this is like, yeah.

Congressman Greg Casar

And the point being is the Supreme Court has already weighed on this multiple times on the side of if Congress puts something into the law, the president's got to follow it. The question is, this Supreme Court that was packed by Donald Trump and that he's testing out deliberately right now, will they hold that up? I think I expect that they will, but we will see. In the world that they do uphold that precedent,

Doug Lewin

Exactly.

Congressman Greg Casar

and when we pass something into law, actually has to move forward. Then there are real opportunities, there are going to be some opportunities, many opportunities to save the Inflation Reduction Act from being slashed. Because as you pointed out, some of the biggest recipients of the kinds of Inflation Reduction Act investments to bring manufacturing back to the United States. Are places like Marjorie Taylor Greene's own district. These are communities that need these jobs the most are seeing a resurgence of American production and manufacturing, and we need that so badly. And so the house has extremely slim margins. Once Trump finishes appointing some house members to his cabinet, then you could have many cases where it's just a one vote margin in the House to get anything passed. So any Republican who could potentially lose significant investments in their district can essentially veto a bill. So you have some members that, you I think at the core of the Trump agenda, in my view, is to pass continued corporate tax breaks and billionaire tax cuts to essentially repay the major industries and the big billionaires that not only bankroll Trump in the Republican Party, but that also are just Trump's buddies at this point. You know, when you see the front row of inauguration being these billionaire buddies of Trump's, I think that's really at the core of the agenda. But there are then these warring factions within the National Republican Party that want to, you know, continue to shrink government to strangle it and drown it in a bathtub and won't want those levels of billionaire tax cuts without cutting programs and Medicare and Social Security are extremely popular programs. They're the one of the biggest parts of our budget, the military. They don't want to cut even though there are certainly some war contractors that are profiteers that we could potentially try to take a look at. But I doubt that they'll actually go there because there are again members that are so tied in with those private defense industries that that may not get cut. And so now they're trying to go after what they see as quote unquote sort of woke and Green New Deal policies, which is really a very, you know, what they might call that would be a tiny sliver of the budget. And once you look at the major investments in what they might call, quote unquote, the Green New Deal or whatever it is they want to call it, you look at it, it's, you know, investments in making sure that there's a battery manufacturing plant in a part of the country that has lost industrial jobs and wants to regain those industrial jobs.

So it really puts them in a rock and a hard place. And I think in the positive aspect of this is that between that rock and a hard place, maybe we actually get past the name calling and the labeling of stuff and people start saying, hey, you know what? This is just a good idea. Even though Joe Biden signed it into law, building our capacity for manufacturing solar panels, building our capacity for manufacturing batteries, researching the energy technologies of the future is a good idea, whether it's because you want to stay competitive with China, whether you want to bring back manufacturing jobs to the United States, whether you just want to be a politician that makes sure unemployment goes down in your community. Maybe regardless of the letter next to your name, this is a good thing. I hope that's where we wind up. It hasn't been my experience this last term in Congress, but I'm hoping to make it our experience because it's where we need to get to is just get some of these things off of the partisan chopping block and make sure that if it's just good for the country, that it should just be good.

Doug Lewin

Yeah, mean, bizarrely, ironically, whatever, we're in a place now where if you were to design like Tabula Rasa, a, you know, American energy dominance, America first energy agenda, like a lot of it would be the stuff that's in the IRA, like manufacture it here, compete against the Chinese, don't let the Chinese, you know, government and industry control clean energy over the next decades. yeah, mean, hope springs eternal. hear you that the experience doesn't always like match up with what you think might make sense, but there's at least an opportunity maybe I think for some the, for some bipartisan work to happen over the next few years. Hope Springs eternal.

I do want to ask you before we run out of time about the American Energy Worker Opportunity Act and your work related to the, some of the federal heat rules. I mean, this is, this seems to me like one of the biggest issues that just doesn't get talked about that much. mean, look, I, and, and I hope people from all parts of the ideological spectrum listen to this. I interview Republicans and Democrats both for this pod. And I hope people listen to folks of the other letter behind their name, but whatever like letter you associate with, whatever party associated with, even whatever you believe about climate change and what is causing it, what is just a simple empirical matter is the temperatures are higher in the summertime. I don't think there's really any debate about what's causing that, but even if I were to grant that, like, you could debate what's causing that, what you can't debate is that 2011 was the hottest summer Texas ever had recorded. 2023 was the second hottest 2024. Seemed very cool if you lived in Texas because 2023 had just happened, but was actually the sixth hottest summer. Basically the average of any last 10 years is the hottest average last 10 years period. And so when you talk about a state where you have a lot of construction workers working outside during summer times where it's a hundred degrees every day and there are not required breaks, that's a big deal.

I know you're background, having worked for Workers Defense Project, this issue is near and dear to your heart. I'm not going to ask you a specific question. I just want you to speak to the importance of having protections for workers in the heat and what you think those policies should look like, maybe what's in the American Energy Worker, or the American Energy Worker Opportunity Act, has more to do with oil and gas worker transition, but the federal heat rules, climate change mitigation, talk about any and all of that that you'd like to in the time we have left.

Congressman Greg Casar

On top of the key consumer issues around making sure you have power when it's hot or when it's cold, we also know that climate affects us with what we're doing most of our days, which is at work. And it is getting hotter and hotter. Heat is actually the biggest climate killer we've got, more than killing us in hurricanes or tornadoes or in floods people die because it's just so hot. And especially if they're working really difficult outdoor jobs, or even if they're in some of these warehouse jobs or work in the baggage belt at the airport where it gets really hot. And if workers aren't prepared or aren't able to take a break, then people get sick. that obviously hurts us economically. And it also obviously hurts our families. So needlessly. When people say, know, like, well, shouldn't employers already give workers a break? I've heard from far too many instances where that doesn't happen. On a construction job, when somebody's trying to hit a deadline before the next construction crew comes in, hey, we've got electrical coming in tomorrow. We need to wrap this up. Don't come off the scaffold for the next six hours. And somebody runs out of water in their water bottle. That's when somebody gets a stroke and dies. A postal worker here in Dallas just recently died getting pushed to wrap up his route. He'd been working for the postal service for decades. They're in these trucks without air conditioning. They're walking from door to door and that over 100 degree heat, dedicated public servants, church going member guy that everybody knew and loved in the community. know, Mr. Gates dropped down and died a federal employee. And so the Biden administration, totally preventable, the Biden administration put forward a proposed rule after lots of scientific study and support across a lot of business industries to say, look, when the temperature gets above 90 degrees, then people deserve a quick little break every couple of hours. And this is going to prevent deaths. And this kind of rule has been killed by oftentimes big industry lobbies, especially in big ag and in construction. But I pushed our own postal service, Postmaster General DeJoy recently, to implement this rule himself. This rule would have applied to him as well. And they said no. And so there's this resistance at the industry level that says, OK, we've got this handled. But clearly, it isn't actually being handled. And so here in the United States of America, we're hoping to finally win this basic right for workers. The rule has been proposed. And it could be finalized if the Trump administration chooses to finally put it into effect. The Biden administration has gone through all these hoops that were put in place essentially by Newt Gingrich back in the day to make it, know, he had to go through all these hoops to propose the rule, get it written up, get it vetted, and it just has to go into effect. And we'd love for it to go into effect in time for this summer and ready to work with anybody, with any letter behind their name to try to get that done. The American Energy Worker Opportunity Act, as you've noted, is a different topic. I led that bill, bicameral bill, between the House and the Senate. Senator Sherrod Brown carried that bill in the Senate and he tragically lost his race here in Ohio recently. But the vision behind that is that too often, talking about a just transition, workers on the ground, especially in places like the Gulf Coast, have heard those words and think they might be empty words. Or as I heard from one union leader in the fossil fuel industry that we just heard that that's a fancy funeral and we don't want that. We want to make sure that as we transition to cleaner energy, that fossil fuel workers are at the table and that we make sure that people are able to pay their mortgage and pay their rent and do their jobs. I can hold Exxon accountable for polluting our communities while still caring about the folks that work there.

So I want to make sure that those workers transition into jobs that pay the same salary. that we actually recognize that part of the cost of transitioning to an economy that is cleaner and better for us in the immediate and the long term is also taking care of the workers that are just doing their jobs and have done their jobs honorably and power this country for a century. And so I want those fossil fuel workers to be taken care of. I want to make sure that if they are unemployed that we immediately move them over into equal paying clean energy jobs. want those jobs to be union jobs, just like so many of our fossil fuel jobs are. And so that bill really is, know, traditionally has been a bill that's been supported by the mine workers, has been supported by the utility workers, has been supported by the steel workers and the electric workers. Those, we need to make sure that those folks are a part of this conversation, because we aren't just telling people in fossil fuel, hey, sorry, you know, we've moved on. But no, actually, we're we're making this transition with you as the energy workforce. We're so grateful for those workers' contributions. We're not going to leave them out in the cold as we try to save the planet and save the country.

Doug Lewin

Yeah, I know you've got to go in a minute. I don't think, I just want to say this kind of in closing. I don't think people really realize this, even though drilling and production in the Permian Basin of Texas is up dramatically. actually produced more oil and gas in Texas 2024. Well, in the United States in 2024, then fueled by Texas, then in any country in the history of the world produced more than Saudi Arabia ever has. the the amount of workers in the industry is down 100,000 from 2014 when it was about 300,000 workers according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, down to about 200,000 workers now. So even with increased production, because there's so much automation, and this will be increasingly true as AI comes into production more and more, there's going to be more and more workers left looking around for what's next. And I think there are big opportunities in geothermal and nuclear, you know, lot of people talk about oil and gas to solar. doesn't make a lot of sense. That's like electricians, but geothermal is drilling, nuclear is a lot of fabrication. Like there are opportunities there. So I'm really glad you're working on that. And again, there's a theme here. Like I can't imagine anybody of any ideological stripe not caring about that. Who wouldn't want to see oil and gas workers that for whatever reason, whether it's automation or less drilling or whatever the reason, have a really good next opportunity. That seems like that would be pretty universal, right?

Congressman Greg Casar

Well, Sherrod Brown famously was able to continue to be reelected in Ohio in a state that overwhelmingly was voting for Donald Trump at the top of the ticket. so clearly this message of putting workers first moves that core group of voters that don't necessarily associate somebody just with having a D or R next to their name. They want somebody that's going to be fighting for them. And so I've made that pitch. across the island hopefully can continue to build out the group of people that are going to care about working people and the power coming on and the jobs being good more than just sort of the letter next to your name and whether you're on that team or not.

Doug Lewin

Congressman, thanks for being on the Energy Capital Podcast. Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you wish that I would have anything you'd like to say in closing?

Congressman Greg Casar

No, that was great. Thank you so much for having me, Doug, and for keeping these issues top of mind for all of us. My real hope, yeah, is that here in the energy capital of the country and of the world, that we can wind up having a grid that is reliable when it gets real cold or real hot. Like you said, I grew up here in Texas, and I know it's hot, but not this hot, this early, this long at these temperatures, and also this cold.

I mean, I remember when it just used to be a field day at school when there was like a little bit of snow that would melt on the ground. Now it feels like, you know, this is a regular thing that it's freezing over here. And so it's just, it's, got to be a real concern to us and we've got to work together on it. So thanks a lot,

Doug Lewin

Thank you Congressman.

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